Connie Go Lightly
by leaky.oven
Summary: Conrad Achenleck buys groceries for Hanna Cross. He knows how to get stains out of the dead man's shirts. He even lends his couch to the Seelie orphan, and helps a werewolf with her self-image crisis. One would think Conrad Achenleck was a nice guy, by these examples. Doc Worth is burdened by the truth of the matter; Conrad isn't nice, and that's what makes him perfect. Slash.
1. Prelude

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

Image and characters copyright Tessa Stone

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

"'Ere you go, cupcake."

The thick plastic of the blood bag is cool and smooth, a weighty heft snagged mid-air with a muffled _plaff_ against Conrad's palm. It much reminded Conrad of the water-balloons filled with pudding on faire days, tossed from one line of screamers to the next until they broke and disqualified someone in a muddy splatter. His hardly ever broke, back in the day, though there was no use bragging the point. 'Pudding-tosser' would have fit snugly between the confectionery nicknames and the sexual innuendo, a bridge fording colorful insults.

Conrad holds the bag up by its sterile plastic corner. "I can pay for this, you know. I _have_ a job."

Doc Worth snorts, disrupting the cloud of acrid smoke that haloed his head of receding blonde hair. "Keep your milk-money, Mary Jane."

Conrad sniffs, eyes narrowing. "I don't want to owe you anything."

"I can respect that. Now get." Worth had hunched himself further over a coverless book, bony shoulders standing in sharp relief beneath the off-white ruff of his coat. A long hand slides from the margin of yellowed pages, flapping toward the door without so much as a glance.

"_I have money _so it's not a big - "

The book hits the cheap metal desk with a hollow ring. "Can't. Take it up with Cross."

"With - "

"I'm gonna stop y'right there, toots. Take. It up. With Cross."

"This has nothing to do with - "

"Fuck's sake, you four-eyed _tit_. I said no and I even took it upon my generous heart t'give you a fucking clue. Now scram, you fuckin' turtle-necked headache." Worth flips a page of the textbook, scowling as a framed newspaper article clatters off its perch from the force of the slamming door.


	2. Where Friends Dare to Tread

"Uhn, Mr. Achenleck?"

"Hello, Hanna. We need to talk." Conrad pushes through the doorway into the grimy little apartment, holding up a hand to reassure the ever-watchful dead man on the sagging futon. He pulls at his scarf, uncomfortable and fidgety. "I never paid you for getting rid of that bat, did I?"

Hanna reddens, grinning with too many teeth. "That bat kinda turned you into a vampire, dude."

"Well, actually," Conrad tries to lower his voice, but it still makes him _mad_, "YOU turned me into a vampire. That bat was only half to blame."

Hanna's expression falls.

"At any rate, you got rid of her, didn't you?"

"Mr. Achenleck, you _died_. I don't really call that a case, well, solved. So it's totally cool if you don't wanna foot the bill."

Conrad grit his teeth, counting to ten. "I can 'foot the bill'. I _have_ a job and, unlike yours, this job is _regular_ and it _pays_."

"Hanna" the disturbing monotone of the dead man interrupts, "I think your client wants to settle his debts. We need groceries."

Conrad rolled his eyes. The zombie didn't need groceries, and his use of the term 'we' spoke volumes. Hanna nodded, reluctantly, and Conrad fished out his checkbook and began scribbling. "I can also pay you whatever it is Worth is charging. I don't need that kind of charity; thanks all the same."

Hanna has pursed his lips, mouthing 'what' over Conrad's shoulder at the dead man, who simply shrugs. "Mr. Ach – "

"Mr. Achenleck is what they call my father. Please, it's Conrad." He tears off the check and even though he's sort of being nice, still his voice comes out cracked with anger.

"Heh. Okay, cool. Conrad." Another bony-shouldered shrug under a too-large rugby tee. "I dunno what you're talking about with Doc Worth. He's my doctor, so sometimes I give him, er... stuff for like checkups and medicine and junk." A sniffle, palming the tip of his nose. "But I'm not paying him for any of your, um, stuff? You mean the blood, right?"

Conrad's lips are tight and pale. "Yes. The, er, supplies."

"Right." Hanna is nodding, smoothing back curly orange hair. "Not my department? You can try and pay the Doc directly if you wanna take care of it. Since you're like, settling debts. Heh."

Conrad nods, already glaring suspiciously towards the door. "Well, Hanna. Always a pleasure."

"Sure." Hanna waves, opening the door for his, well, maybe not _friend_ exactly. In a swoop, Conrad is gone. Hanna places the check carefully on an empty pizza box. "Now whaddya suppose _that_ was about?"

Ezekiel/George/Ptolemy gives an enigmatic smile. "A matter of pride, Hanna."


	3. Saunderson and Sons

Conrad often bought groceries.

This was not so unusual in and of itself; every wednesday was for shopping and Conrad saw no reason to interrupt his weekly schedule, however little use he had of food. Thus, Conrad now bought groceries for Hanna - who was a worthy enough candidate for the charity. Fresh things, whole milk and eggs from local farms, steaks from cows raised without hormone supplement. Organic. Expensive. Vegetables and multigrain dry noodles and even sometimes shampoo, though he stopped himself from traveling too far down the 'personal items' aisle in the guise of letting the man keep some dignity (besides it was just weird, what he was doing in the first place, and something about soap made it weirder, like apron-at-home weird, like big goofy awkward grin that had Conrad delivering the groceries in the middle of the night to a stoic sidekick zombie instead – as if Hanna would wake up every thursday morning to grocery christmas and never would santa have to suffer his beaming gratitude).

It was on one such delivery evening that Hanna's lopsided apartment door was opened to reveal not a slightly bemused dead man, but the suspicious glare of Doc Worth.

"Wot?" As if Worth were expecting someone or something else, and was supremely disappointed to find Conrad there on the dingy little welcome mat instead.

"Er." A paper bag in each arm, celery frond poking him in the cheek, Conrad nearly contemplated retreat. He pushed past the lanky obtrusion instead, mumbled a greeting to the dead man, who was clearing table space wordlessly. The zombie's usual thanks and wordless amusement were absent – he was rigid and tense and didn't meet Conrad's curious stare. "Is Hanna in?" The futon in the far corner was rumpled and empty, but still the question begged asking.

"Hanna is not here." Justin/Kai/Alexander intoned, but if there was frustration or worry in those spare words, Conrad couldn't hear it.

Worth, however, remained expressive. "Red's taken hisself on a little outing, sounds like. Here," Conrad caught the chilled bloodbag with a surprised fumble. "I'll leave y'folks to yer supper." A yellowed glare toward the grocery bags, for which Conrad had the sudden inexplicable urge to step in front of and hide from scrutiny. Worth turned a bony shoulder up as if to block the wind while lighting a cigarette, and shut the door with a clatter after himself.

"Saunderson and Sons, LLC." The dead man muttered. "A warehouse. We are not to follow." A shift in his step from counter to fridge to cupboard, and come to think on it, the apartment had grown steadily tidier since Gregory/Nnando/Casey had taken up residence. There were hardly any roaches.

"Er," Conrad bit down on a frown, fingering Worth's parting gift. "What?"

"Hanna is on a case. There have been murders, injuries. Arrows and crossbow bolts, fired from invisible hands. We are not to follow, but that is the last known lead. Down Wallabash Street, near the wayside. Saunderson and Sons, LLC."

It was the most Conrad had ever heard the zombie speak, and he suspected there was an underlying current to the information. He sniffed, worrying at a corner of the plastic bag with a seeking fang. "So?" He bit, and drank deep, and paused to mutter how disgusting it was all cold like that, and found the zombie watching him with an unblinking scrutiny.

"So, Hanna left to follow that lead. Four days ago."

Conrad frowned up at Domino/Kirk/Hector. "Did he say why he had to go alone?"

"Yes." A pause, and if there was impatience in Zoolander/Ezekiel/Barton's stance, then Conrad couldn't see it. "I promised Hanna that I would not follow. I did not, however," A smirk, a definite smirk, "promise against sending others to his aid."

"Four days..." Conrad muttered, sagging against a countertop. "Who are you going to send?" The next question was going to be 'and what was this danger, exactly', but the zombie's glance to the door told Conrad all he needed to know.

A shrug. "If Hanna is injured, a doctor is the better candidate."

Conrad sneered. "So what's so ultimately dangerous that Hanna swore you into letting him go it alone?" Not that he was fishing for information in preparation to go himself, but... But he was doing exactly that, and he suspected the zombie was playing along just so he could creatively edit the confession once Hanna was recovered and (inevitably) got all indignant over being rescued.

"The victims only shared a few common denominators. Adults, twenties to middle aged. Divorced or widowed or otherwise single. What would shoot arrows at people like that?"

"You've got to be kidding me."

"It is just our suspicion. But. Hanna was afraid, if either one of us were hit..."

"Ugh!" Conrad drove curled fingers through his hair. "And you sent _Worth_?"

"I could not reach Toni."

"_Who_?"

"Short. Werewolf." A raised eyebrow. "Female." A latent smirk. "Single."

Conrad hissed in exasperation. "_Jesus_. Did you want to save Hanna's life, or get him laid?"

"If it could be accomplished. Both." A chuckle that sounded like moths against a wardrobe door. "In all seriousness, Mr. Achenleck, people have died. For whatever reason, this minion of Eros uses solid corporeal arrows." Remus/Tobias/Yeltzen approached Conrad, as close to imploring as he seemed capable. "And it aims for the heart."


	4. Glorify

It was the first time that year Conrad had voluntarily touched someone that wasn't a violent attempt on their life (Adelaide) or an equally violent attempt on their vulgar assumptions (Worth). The fact of the matter was that Conrad preferred not to touch anyone, at all, _ever_, and struggled with his revulsion in the face of the horror he'd seen that night.

First off, Cherubs were not the rosy-cheeked winged infants of the Renaissance. They were many-headed, and large, and all wrong; a mashup of animal parts and too many wings and three pairs of skinny dark arms with long flashing nails with which they could play harps and fire cupid bows, apparently. Cherub wasn't even the right word; this thing was whatever a cupid was, some long-forgotten slice of lore that had warped over the long years through the march of christianity across the imaginations of the people. Or something.

Hanna wasn't exactly clear in his babbling lecture. He twisted in Conrad's grasp, a sweaty days-starved shell that wanted nothing more than to _go to _that thing wailing and flapping in the far corner. "You _can't_!" He sobbed, screamed, writhed in Conrad's reluctant grip.

The arrows flew. Worth fired the shotgun.

Hanna collapsed, grief-stricken, and Conrad dropped him indelicately to the warehouse floor. Kicking aside the sharpie marker, Conrad shuffled in a circle to survey the damage, blood thick and sweet in the air. Hanna had taken a bolt in the thigh days earlier; the wound had been wrapped with dirty bandages the duration of his stay with the Cherub (with which he had, apparently, fallen in love). It was with a twinge that Conrad registered his own wound, a delayed spike of fear when he realized that arrows were really just little wooden stakes that could fly at high speeds. His ribs were pierced through from behind, missing his heart by the grace of panic.

Worth had staggered up by then, unceremoniously yanking the shaft free of Conrad's dead torso with a warning curse. Conrad had winced, but it hadn't hurt nearly as badly as he'd been prepared for. It was all very... odd. Meeting Doc Worth's venomous gaze for a split second; relieved there was no lightning strike of sudden and overwhelming infatuation. Conrad felt a little badly for Cross sobbing dejectedly on the floor there, but that was as far as_ feelings _went for the night. He hoped.

"Kid, it killed people," Worth argued softly, helping Hanna to a shaky stand. "Yer gonna feel like shit about it for a little while, and then yer gonna remember this was all boll-oddness and mumfuckery. Hey?"

Conrad shifted in place, discomfited by the presentation of Worth _consoling someone_, and haunted by the lingering warmth against the inside of his arms where bony ribs had heaved. "Oh,_ son of a -_" Conrad blurts, staring down at his own arms in sudden dawning alarm. Shit shit _shit_, he was in fake love with Hanna. He wanted to 'go to' him and maybe do that hugging grapple thing until Hanna stopped crying.

Worth's sharp demand 'wot' and Hanna's babbled rush of denial clashed together. Conrad relented the stage to his own wordless horror and Hanna plowed on; "It was just _lost_ and it ran out of magic ammo so it got new kindsa arrows and it doesn't know what death even_ is _and she - it -" A hiccough. A far-away gaze. "Man. She was so cool."

"She was gonna kill us, Red." Doc Worth lights a cigarette with shaking hands.

"No. No, man. She was... she wanted to_ understand_. She wanted people to be _happy_." Hanna slumps, exhaustion catching up with his overwrought body. "Why did you have to kill her?" He looks like he's about to cry again, staring up at Worth like maybe he wants to knock one out on his sharp smug fucking chin. But Worth isn't smug right now, and that perhaps was the cherry on top of the entire disturbing sundae.

"Okay, so who the fuck else is ready to get out of here?" Conrad interrupts the weighty moment with forced impatience. "Hanna, I think you really need to -" He pulls in a sharp breath when he registers that he can smell it, that Worth is _also_ bleeding and that means he wasn't the only one who'd gotten hit and fuck, fuck _everything_, fuck this place, they couldn't both be in fake love with Hanna because that would just be too -

Both watching Conrad's barely restrained meltdown, Hanna glazed by trauma and Worth sharp with his usual agitation whenever the theme for the week was how badly Hanna could manage to fuck himself up (and Conrad's growing investment in _giving a fuck wa_s possibly the most disturbing trump, but who knew, the evening was young yet and Conrad was ready to be surprised). Then of course Worth ups the ante by stepping forward, brows pinched up in expressive_ concern,_ "Y' all right there yerself, Connie?"

Because Conrad had stopped mid-lecture, mid-rant, and fallen silent and ashen. "..._Am I the only one who realizes how fucked we all are right now_?"

"Aw princess, yer hardly gonna bleed out -"

"Fuck _off_, Worth, that's not what I'm talking about!" Conrad marches forward and grasps Hanna's arm, gritting his teeth as he glares down, their glasses nearly colliding. "You can fix this. Tell me you can fix this. I know you can, Hanna, please," and he says Hanna's name as if it were a girl's, a girl who was breaking his heart and he were only begging her not to leave his dysfunctional finicky OCD jerk ass. "It's not real. It's not real and you can get rid of it and we don't all have to be royally fucked, right?"

Hanna blinks, slowly. "I'm sorry, dude." He shrugs Conrad's grip easily free. "You didn't let me save her. You even..." A hard appraisal, head-to-toe, and Conrad never felt so wretched. "As far as I'm concerned, you can both go fuck yourselves." Hanna turns away and strides from the warehouse with more strength than Conrad figured someone trapped in isolation for half a week would have.

Worth snorts around his cigarette, clearly impressed.

Conrad rounds on Doc Worth, fists clenched. "Don't even fucking _pretend _this doesn't affect you."

"Feh. Why should it? He'll live."

"You aren't - aren't you -" Conrad gestures from Worth's bleeding arm to the empty warehouse door. "In fake magic love with Cross?"

Worth blows smoke right over Conrad's shoulder, leaning close. His bloodshot, sunken eyes trace a slow and deliberate path up Conrad's frame until they meet the incredulity dawning on his face. "Nope."


	5. Entree a la Wampyr

The next time Conrad marches into Worth's clinic, it is with a very curt "Justherefortheblood,thanks." He damn well can't meet the man's eyes, but has to spare a greeting to Lamont Toucey or otherwise raise suspicion which was ridiculous because _nothing was wrong, thanks_.

"Hanna left yer somefin'," Worth grumbles over the top of his newspaper, waving toward the minifridge in which Conrad's food supply was being kept. Stuck to the fridge with a little skull magnet was a note.

_Conman,_

_Don't worry. There are like, a bagillion (bajillion?) kinds of love, and not all of them romantic. I didn't want to marry the seraphim so I know it's not like you want to marry me. (Unless you do? In which case, don't feel bad when I say no.) Point I'm saying, writing, whatevs, is that you don't have to avoid me. I was mad but I'm not anymore. If you want to get this thing taken care of, you know where to find me._

_Sorry I'm always such a fuckup,_

_H. F. Cross_

Conrad slumps against the filing cabinet, his dead shriveled heart clenching with ghost pains. Hanna wasn't a fuckup, he was just... he tried, and Conrad knew that, and – oh fuck when was he going to STOP DOING THAT? Of _course_ Hanna was a fuckup! Of course Conrad should be angry! He just couldn't... manage... to do that right then. Not with Hanna's apology note still folded between his fingers. And hell, maybe there was some sort of cure to be found, some bizarre and dangerous scavenger hunt to find all the right ingredients for an anti-love potion or something.

"You gonna decorate my office all night, Connie?" Worth chuckles, and Conrad nearly throws the blood bag at Worth's head just to wipe off that _damn near pleasant_ sort of grin, so alien on the sharp face. Worth had even shaved, and to Conrad's horror seemed to have had his hair cut too. "Not that 'm complainin'."

A look passed from Lamont to Conrad that was equal parts confusion and alarm, and Conrad had no choice but to shrug with an acidic aside, "I'd throttle him if I could stand to touch him."

"R-right," Lamont gives one of his uneasy laughs. "Want me to throttle him for you?" He ducks a long-armed swipe, laughing in earnest.

"Bugger off, the both of yeh." Worth settles back to his paper with hunched shoulders. The usual grimy off-white coat is absent, his bony forearms exposed by a moth-eaten Harley T-shirt with bandages wrapped tight from wrist to elbow (more likely covering track marks, the thought to which Conrad shudders).

Lamont seems nonplussed at the lack of further retaliation. Conrad toes his way carefully across the room, slamming the door after himself. He doesn't wait to get the bag to his apartment; he tears it open in the alley and drains it in seconds, discarding the evidence of having even been to Worth's clinic right there in the nearby dumpster.


	6. Persuing the Ends to a Means

"Con-my-man! Glad you're here," Before Conrad can even finish knocking on the door, Hanna has swept him through it (literally, swept, by the elbows no less) and deposited him in a desk chair that had seen better days. Better, _duct tape free_ days. "So, before you start, I got good news and bad news."

A despondent sigh, though Conrad is finding it hard to summon the usual irritation Hanna's enthusiasms ought to have produced. "Bad news first, if you'd be so kind."

"Right." The smile fell off that freckled face and Conrad wondered if it was haircut season in the city 'cos the usual array of red curls had been shorn down to something, almost, well, professional. Hanna actually looked every year of his twenty-four, regardless of how his ears stuck out like a taxi driving down the street with its doors open. The sobriety with which he delivered the next news solidified this facade of maturity. "People are dying. Again. It's kinda up to me and Flobottomus here to stop it, _again_. We kinda might need a four-man-or-woman team on this one, and I can't get ahold of Toni, again. So we're going stag, _again_."

"'We'?"

"Now for the good news!" Hanna straightens. "You aren't gay."

"Uh,"

"...You aren't gay, right?"

"No!"

"Good! Then you're not in love with me. You love me like a bro, y'know?"

Conrad's face pinches up as he digests this latest bit of rapid-fire profundity. "I... I do?"

"Well, yeah." A shrug, palms held up. "Unless you totally wanna make out with me right now or somethin', pretty sure we're okay and totally not cursed with like, some real heinous romantic drama magic right now."

"I most certainly _do not_ want to make out with you, Hanna."

"Right, that's what I said. There an echo in here? Sheesh."

Conrad glares across the room, trying to puzzle out just what it _was_ that he felt toward Hanna, if not some crocked-up affection. Well, affection certainly enough, but to what degree...? To the kind of degree he'd forgive the man his quirks. Maybe even find some solace in his company.

"Dude," Hanna snorts, and Conrad never again wants to be on the receiving end of one of those _sympathetic gazes_. "It's called friendship. It won't break you. Er," a retraction; "Unless we do some dangerous limb-snapping stunts together on a dudely bro whim, in which case it might actually break some of you. But not as badly as it might, metaphysically, were you stricken in a non-bro, romantic way! Heh!"

"Stop." Conrad grumbles, just because he'd rather grumble than smile, which he was dangerously close to doing, because, _fuck_, he actually liked Hanna and was immensely relieved that it didn't have to be _weird_ between them. Conrad sighs through his nose and is about to ask Hanna if he wants to go grocery shopping before this big people-are-dying case, but then;

"So, okay, now you'll wanna know how to kinda, like, weaken the influence of the other arrow, right?"

"Um."

"The, ah," Hanna taps his fingertips together. "The one that hit Worth?"

Conrad straightens like he'd been pinched. "GFFFF. YES. YES, HANNA. I would like that. To know it. _Immediately_."

"Okay, sheesh! Barack?" The dead man drifts from the cluttered scenery, another piece of furniture simply come to life. He sets a heavy book in Conrad's lap and wanders back to the kitchen, showing more sensitivity to Conrad's embarrassment than anyone else involved in the fiasco. Hanna flourishes. "Page eight. Vagaries of Romance. To summarize; love is like a flower. It can't wilt until it blooms. You leave it as a bud, and a bud it'll always remain, getting bigger and bigger over the years until it presumably, eh... consumes you in madness? Heh."

"Er, right..." Conrad peruses the aged yellow pages, turning a leaf carefully between thumb and forefinger. "Why don't we just burn this hypothetical flower bud? Tear it out and destroy it?"

"Dude. Put the kerosene away. Love ain't like that. It's pretty much invincible, even to a guy as bitter and caustic as Lucian freaking Worth."

"Hold, hold, _hold on_," Conrad's got both hands up in supplication. "I thought this was just 'dudely bromance'. Worth isn't gay."

Hanna turns to Conrad, stance wide and arms held up in exasperation. "Have you _seen_ his _coat_?"

Conrad's entire expression puckers. "Not recently."

"I mean, c'mon guy, it's pretty obvious he took a shine to you right off the bat. Heh."

"You ever make a pun about my death again and I'll gut you, broship or no."

"Eesh you're cranky when it comes to the Doc, aren't ya?"

"The man's heinous and I despise everything he stands for."

"… Free healthcare?"

"Just tell me how to break the curse, Hanna. I can't _deal_ with facing that every time I have to eat." The book is snapped shut and Conrad stands. Maybe he was being a little harsh, and recently Worth had even been tolerable company, in so much as his ribald insults had been turned into ribald compliments and oh god it was just so much easier when he could punch the guy and walk away. 'Ya got nice eyes, I like red' wasn't exactly grounds for physical violence.

"Okay, so, this is going to sound a little counter-intuitive, but trust me for a minute. We'll even do a practice so you know what you're doing."

"Oh Christ, Hanna, I don't have to kiss anybody to break any spells, do I?"

Hanna's face screws up to mirror Conrad's horror. "What? No! No, just listen." He takes a deep breath. "Repeat after me:" Conrad leans in to better hear, ready to memorize the spell or incant or whatever it was. "I love you, man."

"_What_?"

"Ugh, just say it! You think I LIKE doing this kinda stuff? Please, rip the bandaid off fast and it'll hurt less. Okay?"

"Er," Conrad has broken out in a cold sweat (he didn't even know he _could_ still sweat). He looks down at Hanna, wonders to himself if it's just that easy, if they really are just words like those in a spell. "I – " Well, he _did_ love Hanna, sort of. Not that he would ever bring himself to admitting anything of the sort.

"It's just practice, guy. You might even feel less of an attachment to me once you get it out there - "

"I love you, Hanna. I love you I love you I love you."

"That... was the worst..." Hanna is trying not to laugh. "Okay. I love you too, broseph. Feel better?"

Conrad looks as if Hanna has just farted. "No."

"Eh, it'll take some time. That's all you really need; just get Worth to say it out loud, tell him it can't really be that way with you, and let time run its course. He'll be kinda pissed off, but then again he's always kinda pissed off. Least he'll stop pining."

"There isn't really any guarantee this will work, then?"

"No no, it's in the clause. It'll work, otherwise everybody ever in a relationship would be all stalker mode 24/7 and divorces would all end in murder. And, I mean, you're not gay so that puts a pretty big stamp of approval for the romantic veto." Hanna scratches a rib and Conrad doesn't deign to agree nor argue. "Like, okay, so sometimes straight guys fall for gay chicks, you know? Or is that straight chicks fall for... anyway! They get over it. They wouldn't be able to move on and get struck again if they didn't." A one-shoulder shrug. "It all seems kinda chaotic and aimless but it's actually a carefully attenuated mechanization of fate. Neat, huh?"

Conrad hums in the back of his throat. "So how do I get Worth to admit it aloud?"

"You could ask him? I can't imagine he's having too good a t – no, nevermind, he's probably getting a huge kick out of this. Uhh. Wow, heh, I have _no idea_ how to make Worth cooperate! His loss if he doesn't. You could always move to Mexico. I hear it's nice for vampires down there."

Conrad sucks in a slow, sharp breath, breathing out in a huff; "Fffffine! I'll give it my best shot next time I see him. Would it be considered a hate crime if I tried to beat it out of him?"

Hanna nearly drops the book Conrad has handed him. "Nooo... but I wouldn't DO that, on principle."

Conrad snorts. "Please, anybody deserves a good thrashing, it's Worth."

"Yeah, normally I'd agree buuut... hegetsoffonit? Probably how you caught his, er, attention in the first place?"

To this, Conrad had no comprehensible response. Norway/Bethany/Django pokes his head from the kitchenette to make sure they aren't being attacked, and retreats with a ghost of a smile. During Hanna and Conrad's conversation, he'd been trying to get a hold of Toni Ipres through a series of well-researched phonecalls; genuinely worried to find that her friends had no idea where she'd disappeared to and jotting a note down that, perhaps, they had another case in the works.


	7. A Bunyip inHand is Worth Two in the Bush

The riverside park is cut into squares of gaslight and shadow, hedgerow and topiary borders of grass and weed and causeway stone. Veser grips his flashlight tighter, shaking it to reaffirm the durability of its flickering battery charge. "So, eh... are they bunnies? Australian bunnies the size of cars?"

Worth lets out a gruff laugh, voice wet with smoke, "Actually they look more like capybara. Prehistoric capybara the size an' temper of a hippo, mixed with a gator, mixed with a dog. An' maybe 's got tentacles an' a platypus snout." He dangles two fingers in front of his mouth to illustrate, "fangs. Evil an' huge."

"Remind me never to visit the land down-under."

Weeds and bracken are overcome by Worth's long stride as he advances through their route, fumbling his smoke and cursing at its loss. He straightens with another cigarette in bony hand. "Awr kid, what doesn't kill ya only makes ya stranger."

Veser sniffs, unimpressed. "Thanks a lot, Heath." His large green eyes scowl out along with his flashlight beam, clearly more alert and invested in Hanna's outing than Doc Worth (who was more concerned about the frequency with which he was dropping shit in the mud).

Worth then loses a fold of matches in the attempt to tear one free, and he stands at the side of the path to glare imperiously down at the soaked ignitions before thrusting his arm back into his coat for the butane lighter.

An insect whines in Veser's ear and he slaps at it, panicking. "You know all that smoke might like, scare away our quarry and shit, right?"

" 'Xactly." Worth levels his haggard attention back to the _teenager_ with whom he had been paired. It hadn't taken lots to divvy the group up, since Hanna and he were the only two with any real supernatural experience, and Count Snaggletooth had protested wildly at the suggestion he be left alone in a swamp with 'that junkie psychopath'. "Yeh don't want t'meet a Bunyip, Sharky."

"Okay, Steve Irwin? Cool it on the nickname; I'm part Selkie, 'n shit's insensitive."

"So what's it matter t'me, Sharptooth?"

"Nng, fuck _okay_ whatever be that way." The two descend into a moody silence, punctuated only by the rustle of cattail reed and the squelch of riverbank under their boots. Worth would pause once or twice, edging toward the lap of the water to listen for any telltale song - Bunyip sang like whales - flashing his torchlight methodically along the murky sweep. Fidgeting with the crowbar he'd found under an old tire in the muck, Veser breaks the verbal stagnancy. "Think Cross 'n Orlock are doing any better?"

"We're about to th' bridge, so's you can ask yer own damn self."

"You always this much of a crank, or is it just my natural charm bringing out the best of people again?"

That draws Worth up short. Sure, he'd noticed the kid's black eye, and overheard the conversational detritus that Conrad Achenleck's couch had played host to this mouthy halfbreed for unspoken stretches. Something tickles at the back of Lucian Worth's sharp mind, and he grumbles around his cigarette, "That a usual prollem, eh?"

"Tsch." Veser shoves through a patch of cattails, "It's my special talent." His flashlight beam dodges wildly around the choppy water of the river.

Worth is on the verge of offering some sage advice on the merits of harnessing one's inner ass-hat to one's benefit, but a much expected blood-curdling scream interrupts him. He sighs, hitching up his coat collar and canting a light jog to match Veser's cautious hustle toward the bridge. "Princess musta seen a frog," Worth grumbles as they slow on the paved path.

"Who?" Veser turns in the middle of the bridge, casting around for the source of the scream.

"Count Fagula."

"Heh," it comes out of Veser's chest like a gasp of pain, does that laugh, and his shoulders fold in a slump. Shivering as he peers down the opposite side of the bridge, "That kinda sounded like a girl, though."

"'S my fukken point exactly, sharpness."

"Yeah," Veser edges back the way they had come, attention glued to the bridge where Hanna and Conrad were supposed to show. "Yeah, I know. I get it. 'S funny." The tickle at the back of Worth's mind grows into an itch. Veser readjusts his grip on the rusty crowbar. "Listen, hey, Doc... Hey, so uh. Is it true?"

Worth exhales a cloud of fragrant smoke (the reason, he surmised, why Veser was so keen on sticking close). "'S wot 'true'? Gonna need specifics."

"Is that true, I mean, about Orl – Conrad?"

"That he's scared 'a frogs?" Worth hides his grin behind a hand poised at his cigarette. "Fuck if I know. Better to ask 'im yerself... yanno, unless it's one 'a them things that's none of yer goddamn business." Worth ashes his cigarette, inhaling sharply through his nose. "Real embarassin', somethin' like that. To some people, byrate."

"But not to you, huh."

"Well I never been afraid of much of anythin', truth be told. Wouldn't really know nothin' about all that, frogs er otherwise." A cough, a clearing throat and phlegmy contribution to the cobblestones.

Veser pulls his mouth back in an unsatisfied grimace and returns his attention to their rendezvous point. "Think we should maybe go and see what – "

Across the bridge, between two decorative topiaries, Hanna skids in and then promptly out of view - a flash of red and white rugby shirt. Worth throws his cigarette down with a curse. Hanna reverses course, limbs flailing. His words come between the labored breaths of extended cardio, and Worth and Veser turn to match haphazard directions on which way to run. "THANK GREEN FUCKING," Hanna shouts as a blur behind him proves at last that Conrad had not been too far behind, "APPLES YOU STAYED HERE GO GO GO -"

They run, flashlights swaying and sweeping, the riverside park now a disco of draping willow branches and pulsing fog banks. The scream heard moments ago caterwauls after the retreating group, and sounds nothing like a whale at all. A tree interrupts the path, forking it to either the picnic tables or back around to the river, and instead of going either way Conrad (who was the fastest runner, for obvious reasons) slows enough to take Hanna by the elbow and more or less drag him up the gnarled oak. Conrad returns groundside promptly, assisting Veser by nearly throwing him into the branches, and even holds still long enough for Worth to step up his shoulders like a particularly fragrant spider, losing patience last-minute to shove upwards.

"Oi! Not on a firs' date," Worth grunts, lifting himself into the branches as Hanna and Veser scrabble higher in a scattering of bark and old leaves. Conrad scrambles to find a branch that isn't already supporting a fully grown body, and there he sits to fix his glasses to better scrutinize the thing now prowling the trunk of the tree. Worth wasn't so interested in the monster below as he is in the state of his companions, glancing Hanna over before nodding above him at a rambling-breathy-whisper-cursing Veser, and then focusing that clinical gaze of his back on Conrad.

"That," Hanna pants, "is not a Bunyip."

"HOly fucking _fuck_," Veser gains some coherency to add. "It's a fucking _werewolf_."

"Seriously," Hanna pants, still in the process of catching his breath. "You guys. Thanks. I told you to stay at the bridge if anything went wrong or sounded suspicious _and you did exactly that_. Go team." He laughs down at the monster, "Scooby Doo got nothing on us. When we split up we split up _smart_. Hell. Fucking. Yes."

"Oh, sure. Nobody eviscerated? Let's break out the champagne," Conrad drawls, clearly angry now in the wake of his panic. "Please tell me that isn't who I think it is down there."

"Er." Hanna is already scribbling furiously along his carpentry hammer with a marker. "Toni? No way, man. Just 'cos she's the only werewolf we _know_. Yikes dude. I mean. That's _racist_." Conrad bristles. Hanna amends, "But it might be part of why her friends can't find her. All sorts of weird gang issues with werewolves. Territories and things like that. Maybe growly McRabies-face down there scared Miss Ipres into hiding?"

"Growly McRabies-face is making an _unholy racket_ while she's at it, whoever she is." As if to illustrate Conrad's point, the creature cringes in on itself to let out another tortured scream.

Veser leans forward to get a better look, wincing away from the sound. "She's got Toni's necklace."

Hanna stops mid-rune. "What. The one I fixed for her?"

Three people in that tree stiffen, reaching a single conclusion. It is Conrad who breaks the stupefied silence. "Fixed. _Fixed_? Fixed. You."

"Yeah," Hanna is less sure now, finding no confidence in Worth's slump against the trunk or Veser's death grip on the branch above. "It was cracked down the middle, so I took the enchantment off to mend the stone with some glue and sand and then put it back on. Easy fix, coulda given her a new stone too, like one that maybe matched her eyes or at least didn't look so obviously like a magical-weak-point. Hehe."

"So you broke that totally rad musician babe, and now she's after your ass!" Veser moans, hugging crowbar and flashlight to his chest so he can scrub his face in exasperation.

"What! No, I didn't break –"

"Ain't a full moon," Worth muses quietly. "Awfully weird, there bein' a werewolf when it ain't a full moon." He peers up through the dry branches at the quarter-moon hung distant and cold in the night sky.

"Well. Yeah." Hanna sits back on his branch, defeated. "I guess that makes sense. Toni's necklace allowed her to force shifts out of phase, even to control the shape and intensity of the change. But she wouldn't even _be _a werewolf if that magic stopped, she'd just be a normal half-blood."

"There's no such thing as a 'normal' half anything," Veser grouses. "Man, you fucked up big this time."

"_Hey_– " Conrad bites his protest in half, swallowing down the instinct to defend Hanna's capabilities. The tree waits for Conrad to make his point, but Worth loses patience and snatches at Veser's crowbar, the beginning stages of a tug-of-war killed by a sharp glare. Veser relents his weapon, Hanna mumbling down at his runes while Conrad crosses his arms in front of his chest and pretends to be keenly interested in whatever was happening on the riverside.

With his knees hooked over the branch and his torso dangling upside-down over the prowling werewolf, Worth throws his flashlight to the distant underbrush and, using the crook of the crowbar, snags the necklace while the werewolf's head is turned. The change is immediate, and Worth shrugs out of his furred long-coat to drop it cautiously over the naked body trembling a good eight feet below. Worth curls up to shove crowbar and necklace at Hanna before scaling awkwardly back down the tree with a grumble. Brushing at the scrapes the bark left on his exposed, scarred arms, Worth steps gingerly over Toni and kneels to take her pulse. "Out cold."

Hanna falls from the branches with considerably less grace (despite Conrad's helping hand) and curses quietly under his breath. The totem is pocketed with the marker, the crowbar reclaimed by a wide-eyed Veser with leaf-litter in his hair. "H-hey, dude," Hanna turns to Conrad, who doesn't shrug away from the hand imploring on his arm. "Think you could go bat-wise and lend Miss Ipres your clothes? Just for the bus home?"

"Nnf..." Conrad grouses, exhaling dramatically before turning his back to unbutton his shirt (lest he get lost or otherwise tangled in it going 'bat-wise'). There is something in the detached way Hanna had referred to Toni that doesn't settle well in the air, and the light in Hanna's eyes has dimmed under the tension in his forehead.

As Conbat flaps unevenly to a nearby park bench, Hanna gathers the clothes carefully and shuffles to Worth without looking directly at the lump under the ruffed coat. "Okay guys, let's give 'em some privacy."

"Hold the fuck up," Veser snipes. His voice lowers, strengthened with an emotion that makes all present a little embarrassed on his behalf. "You're going to _dress_ her?"

Worth sniffs, carefully placing a cigarette behind his ear for later. "I'm a doctor, en't I?"

Conrad mutters, "And gayer than Sunday Christmas." Every eye that turns to the squeak from the bench holds a spark of complete disbelief (which is to say, Worth pays no such attention). "What," Conrad pipes. "I'm sure Miss Toni would be relieved to know that the back-alley skeeze who gets to see her naked isn't going to take any sort of delight from it."

"Dude," Hanna already has Veser's elbow and is leading him toward the parking lot. "Bad taste."

But Worth, as he turned to the task at hand, was smirking.


	8. Going to Hand in a Hellbasket

There were a lot of reasons to go hungry; reasons that Conrad hadn't, up until this point, ever experienced. Poverty was foremost, as exampled by Hanna's brand of hunger - or more to the point the kind of hunger that struck entire nations to their knees, not just skinny underfed self-employed weirdos. But Conrad had lived a comfortable upper-middle class life, and a slightly _less_ comfortable middle-class unlife, and never run out of groceries.

The second reason to go hungry, and the one more closely related to Conrad's predicament, was availability of foodstuffs. Vampirism had rendered Conrad permanently allergic to real food - he couldn't choke it back, no matter how rare the steak was it still just tasted like so much _dead cow_.

Not as if there wasn't enough blood to go around, though, which brings us to Conrad's actual brush with starvation; when food was available, and money was had, but the consumer was simply too mortified or otherwise emotionally compromised to partake. This, perhaps, was the stupidest reason to go hungry, ever. Eating disorders aside (and man had he ever had a bunch of THOSE growing up), Conrad was simply too neurotic to put his mouth on a stranger in any fashion – hell, he could barely stand simple physical contact with the people insane enough to call themselves his _friends_.

Starvation By Embarrassment; perhaps the worst way to go. He couldn't go to Worth's clinic for the usual freebie, having, in a fit of spite, outed the man. He might have felt more comfortable if he were at least _paying_ for the blood, but as it stood Conrad nearly felt like he _owed_ Doc Worth and nothing made his insides squirm more than the feeling that he was beholden to someone. The fact that Doc Worth was as good as contractually obligated to _like _him (via stupid cherub hoodoo fuckery) only made matters worse.

In fact, the last time someone had admitted to _liking_ Conrad, never mind _loving_, Conrad had broken out in hives so severe as to land him in hospital, canceling his first and last ever date with a girl.

Too proud / anxious / denial-struck to ask someone else to fetch the blood, Conrad starved for the better half of the month. He believed himself _better_ than all this undead nonsense, and what was the point of living forever if he couldn't draw his appetite out and unravel it to an economic, bare-minimum, emergency-only proviso? It wouldn't have been a problem; it _shouldn't _have been a problem, and only _became_ a problem when Veser Hatch showed up at Conrad's condo with a split lip and an overnight bag.

Veser's father had been found and accused of the murder of Lee Falun, but as Hanna was not a real police officer and did not possess any hard evidence, Mr. Hatch had more or less been returned to his daily life unchanged (if not a little drunker and shades more miserable, lacking both his wife as well as his best friend). Veser was old enough to live apart from his father, but... Well, there was a lot of 'but' involved in Veser's life, into which Conrad never pried.

This time, though, Conrad couldn't just open his door and let the kid walk in and order the usual take-out and browse the usual telly. Because Veser was _bleeding_. Conrad unlocked his door, yelled an incoherent excuse as he was clambering out his livingroom window, and fled down his own fire escape. He had smelled it through the door, salty like the ocean and tangy like a silver spoon. The overwhelming _urge_ to - _whatever_ - had run him out of his own home, and the resonant disgust over the fantasy of closing his mouth over Veser's wounded lip and just – and UGH WHAT. _Gross _on so many levels; gross enough of a recall that Conrad actually _gagged_ a little once his Doc-Martens hit the sidewalk.

The emotion to follow, of course, was anger. Dissonant begrudging fueled Conrad's march across the streets of downtown as much as his hunger propelled him on, like an overproud hobo to the soup line, mulish about how easily he'd given in to Hanna's request in sheltering the walking domestic-abuse case as often as he did. Conrad kicked a trash bin over with a satisfying clang, then rounded the alley corner to pound (angrily) on the back-alley clinic's door.

Of course, Conrad only knocked this time around at the behest of his own fears - that Worth might actually have a patient that evening, someone who might have been bleeding, and well. Conrad just didn't want to risk it. A gunshot wound on a thug, or some babushka brat with a scraped knee, or a dock worker with an open soldering wound – things Conrad would have never before grouped in the category 'appetizing'. He knocked again, a little calmer after having so thoroughly unsettled himself but all the hungrier and further confused. Doc Worth's clinic was _always_ open, even if that meant finding the ungainly unwashed sprawl of limbs napping at the plyboard desk.

Conrad cautiously tried the door handle. It wasn't as if the place was a residency - and what were the rules behind that, the difference between _invitation-only_ homes and otherwise free-for-all public offices? To equally powerful relief and apprehension, the door gave way. Peeking around the jamb, Conrad stepped into the clinic's front office without a breath. It was required to inhale to speak, of course, and at first Conrad mistook the aroma in the air for the blood laying placid in its sterile baggies in the confines of the mini-fridge. Upon inspection, this was not the source, everything in that fridge cold and clammy and unappetizing.

There were four doors in the reception room of the clinic, the first leading outside of course and to the immediate right was the door to the unisex public lavatory (a sad array of leaking faculties from some lop-sided era of exposed copper piping). The more important door to the left led to the operating room, but that place smelled of nothing more appealing than disinfectant.

The door on the far wall, however, which tucked itself in the corner behind a stack of old magazines and the mini-fridge on its filing cabinet, revealed a narrow flight of stairs. It was from this unexplored second floor that the smell was coming, and Conrad's first dreadful thought was that Worth had owed money to some gangsters and they'd killed him. Or Worth himself had killed someone, maybe the gangsters to which he owed money (Conrad's imagination rife with reasons why Worth should have just _taken his fucking cheques_). Despite the growing knot of horror lodged in his throat, Conrad claimed each stair silently and methodically.

_The scent_ in the air settled in the back of his brain and put a thick layer of thirst in the back of his throat, the burning kind of thirst one gets from a hangover; Conrad was _positive _he had opened the fridge and claimed the bag of blood he so very desperately needed, yet his hands remained empty, fingers gone sharp in a loose curl against his palms.

Distracted by his own imagination, Conrad could not pull his attention away from what might be waiting just a few more stairs ahead, the small brown stairwell close and stuffy and the carpet underfoot worn soft. The door opened under his slow push as if he were moving underwater, revealing a tidy windowless apartment with second-hand furniture and a bizarre assortment of small-game taxidermy mounted on the walls. It felt like walking into a different reality, all those glass eyes and frozen snarls, and just under the fresh tang of blood lay subtler, more sinister aromas like dust and grandmotherly furniture and a carton of milk that had gone off in the fridge.

Past the cluttered sprawl of dun-brown livingroom and just inside what Conrad assumed was a bedroom door a thin rectangle of light spread up from the carpet like a gold banner. What Conrad was actually seeing was the bathroom door being cracked open to let out the steam of Worth's shower. This also let out _that godawfulamazing smell_ in a thick, damp wave of heat and wet and bright light and if Conrad had never known what hunger was, then it had just introduced itself with all the demand of the newly born - a grasping, screaming thing deep inside that pulled his eyes narrow.

Transfixed, some small tenacious part of Conrad's neuroses kept him frozen at the cracked door. The first thought to surface through the haze was that Worth had, indeed, been injured somehow. Conrad took a step back, anchoring this thought with a shiver of revulsion. The peek of naked ribs as Worth bent to the sink was enough to send Conrad flailing back in sudden realization of just how _creepy_ this all was, and _what the fuck was he even doing_. The thud of his retreating footfall was loud and clumsy and nothing at all like the stalking, silent pace that had brought him that far.

Armed with a straight-razor, Doc Worth stepped out in nothing but a threadbare towel to challenge the poor burglar come to steal what little his uncle had left him.

'I knocked,' Conrad wanted to explain. 'You probably didn't hear that over the running of the shower', he wished to continue. Conrad could say none of this, however, because Worth's domestic weapon of choice was already dripping with blood, neat little rows of the reddest welts Conrad had ever _seen_ lining the taut ridge of Worth's arm.

Worth's glare of challenge and cold violence had melted to something like surprise, but recovered quickly into a sharp derision, green eyes going flat and reptilian. "When's the last time you ate, cupcake?"

Conrad shook his head, throat shut tight. He sank gracelessly to his knees, fingers digging into the balding carpet to keep himself from doing the unspeakable. Worth took a step forward and everything within Conrad recoiled. After a pause, Worth turned on heel and disappeared into the bright damp of the bathroom. Conrad slapped himself, snatching his glasses off to scrub at his face. Nothing could relieve the hot rock in his gut that rooted him to the spot, though, and everything was very wrong like being drunk but it was also all very pleasant like being drunk and holy hell he was never skipping another meal again if it meant fighting tooth and nail not to eviscerate everyone he knew and _what the fuck was Worth doing, cutting himself up like that_?!

Worth reappeared in a pair of dingy jeans, and this was such a relief that Conrad exhaled, then inhaled again because he was crap at self-control. "Hey," Worth grinned over the task of bandaging his arm. "Mate, you look like someone stole yer crack pipe and then ran over yer kitten."

Conrad had indeed taken on the expression of immense disappointment as the vibrant wounds on Worth's forearm disappeared behind sterile bandage. Worth waved his injured arm and Conrad's eyes followed it like a concussed dog might follow the laser dot. To the right... to the left. Up, down, in a circle.

"You want this?"

Terrified, Conrad nodded.

Worth grunted to himself, one hand slung into his back pocket as he worried his bottom lip with his teeth. "Promise not to fukken kill me?"

Conrad still possessed the state of mind to cop offense to this, to the whole ridiculous ordeal in fact, and the one word he managed to grit through a flash of teeth came out in a long hiss (but sounded something like 'promise'). He didn't know up from down, and though the theory had run, that, with the cuts wrapped up he might regain some of his senses, instead a low fog had descended on his brain and it scared him so badly to lose so much of himself that he would have done _anything_ to regain some fucking perspective. Starving. Starving was _so_ not good, it was never good and it never _would be_ good and he'd learned his lesson please god let there be no blowjobs involved in the next twenty minutes how do vampires even kill themselves anyway would he have to chain himself out in the sun or could he just bury himself alive and never have to face the outside world ag –

"I mean it; no take-backsies," Worth drawls, thumbing at the edge of the bandage clips before freeing them of their snag. "I got a cross unner the bed there if ya get too cute; an' you get your head straight and you figger you wanna, what, choke me out over this, in yer weird issue with folks helping you or sommat? Jus' don't; mkay darlin'?" The bandage fell to an easy unravel, perfectly spaced lines of blood staining the pristine white with fat red streaks and Conrad was content to just sit there and breathe it all in, the sluggish welling of salt and skin and everything that was life thump-thudding in Worth's abused veins.

The darkness flared up from the pit of Conrad's core and spread with returned vengeance, and it wasn't until he'd been burned half down his face by the (what) cross that he realized what he'd done. Conrad wasn't hungry anymore, sprawled out on Worth's bedroom carpet with a belly full of singing blood; but he was very, very empty.

Worth had survived the attack, grumbling (as he stepped over the crap vampire laid out in his livingroom) what this would cost in transfusion stock. Hand pressed strategically over the wound to save his carpet, Worth disappeared back down the stairs to fix himself up before the blood-loss caught up to him.

Conrad, see...

Conrad had gone for the throat.

**X x XxX xXx X xX**


	9. Gone Baby, Gone

Conrad Achenleck had clinical OCD.

This was not, say, the OCD of popular media, where everything in his life had to be tidy and the man merely had to wash his face seven times or turn the toast over thrice before buttering it, no. He didn't keep his shoes in any neat array in their closet and he didn't mind a weekend of just sitting in amongst the takeout cartons and pizza boxes to watch season after season of _Downtown Abbey_. There had been a brief hand-washing phase in his teen years, but the germaphobia had waned after he'd gotten free of highschool and he was left with the garden-variety, non-quaint kind of mental illness that only ever served to bring misery crashing into the forefront of his life.

_Obsession_ was the inability to let a matter drop - the less pleasant the thought, the more viciously his brain would cling to it. And it was his _brain's fault entirely_, imagination rife with all sorts of unlikely claptrap to come flooding in (the flavor of the week being _stubble against the scrape of his teeth as he'd -_). Had he left the iron on? Better go check. Had he just turned the iron all the way off, or did he imagine the little click? Better go check again. What if there was a ghost who just now turned the iron on for the specific purpose of burning down his condo and the insurance company wouldn't cover the cost on investigating 'negligent behavior' BETTER GO CHECK THE IRON AGAIN.

The _compulsive_ side of this was that, often, the thoughts had little actual resolution and Conrad was left with nothing to do but revisit bad scenarios until his nerves were worn down to smoking little nubs (_he'd bit Worth, and Worth had _moaned_ and oh god -_). What would seem compulsive to outsiders was in fact the balm to alleviate the anxiety - checking the iron five times to make sure it was off, knocking his shoes together three times exactly to dislodge any poisonous spiders - then three more times just in case, then a third round of three more times because he _couldn't_ let the number stand at three by two, but then there were _two shoes_ so he'd repeat the process for a grand total of eighteen times they needed to be knocked together and if there _were_ any spiders in the dark crevasses of his footwear they'd have long been dead from the trauma.

But then of course Conrad's train of thought would derail entirely, because spider fangs actually held some amount of zinc and other metals and would literally NOT DECAY and what if there was still venom in the spider corpse of course there was still venom if it hadn't bit anything yet and best to just boil the shoes in a pot on the stove which he wasn't ever going to eat out of anyway and _that was how bad it got on a good day_. Boiling shoes, repetitive precautions, assuming the worst was just around the corner ALL THE TIME FOREVER EVEN WHEN HE WAS TRYING TO SLEEP.

Conrad had been on clomipramine up to and beyond the point of his death, though he wasn't entirely sure how well medications _could_ affect the undead, and felt the old uninvited horrors creeping back into his peripheral long before the fiasco at Worth's clinic. But _since_ the mauling of Hanna's back-alley doctor, the Obsessive bads and the Compulsive worsers were popping up like spring daisies, and the condition was in full Disorder mode. Life-stopping, relationship (ha) wrecking, shoulder-check tackle _dis-order_. Because he'd _bitten_ Worth, had a part of a human being in his mouth, a breathing pulsing stretch of skin and salt and he'd _wanted_ the blood, the hot tangy rush, and the spike of golden _something_ that happened in his mouth and all the way down his throat right before Worth _had moaned and ruined everything_.

"You okay, man?" Veser's muffled voice floated through the mahogany of Conrad's bedroom door, knocking again to make sure Conrad was awake.

Conrad had been awake since sunset, paralyzed in bed, feeling _absolutely amazing_ physically - and the opposite of amazing mentally. He felt _attacked_ by his own memory. Under fire. Was taking cover. He bunched the flat navy comforter tighter around his shoulders and grumbled out a response, anything to reassure his house-guest and relent the assault on his mental meltdown. The worst thing about his condition being that, not only could Conrad _not stop feeling shitty_, but he didn't even want to stop _thinking about all the shitty things that made him feel that way in the first place_. If he turned his back, he was certain the threat would only grow and overtake his life in catastrophic ways - recalling that spike of a (reallygreatamazing) _something_ in the taste of Worth's blood, trying to actually stamp out the way it had felt on his tongue, the heat, the rasp of the man's breathing, the scrape of warm wet stubble against his cheek and - _ugh_, ugh, why couldn't he throw up?

The knock returns. "Dude, are you sick? Hungover? Look, man, you've got, like," a loud sigh, "Company. I can tell her to go away if you want. Elvis has left the porcelain palace, something like that?"

Conrad bolted upright. Female company? Client? Marcelaine from Publishing? _His mother_? He scrambled for his glasses and mashed them onto his nose, pyjama top tugged straight and bedhead smoothed into something amenable before a shaking hand wrenched the door open. "What, yes, I am awake, whoisit?"

Veser jerked back, large green eyes blinking in surprise. A small impressed 'huh' escaped before he lowered his eyebrows, voice low. "Ipres. Toni Ipres. Dude I can tell her to take a hike. Or like, offer her some soda or something."

"Or you could go home," Conrad offered without much heat. It was an old joke in the long attempt to leave Veser with some of his pride intact, Conrad pretending to want to kick him out all the time and Veser only really leaving when he had to check up on his alcoholic parent or do a load of wash.

This time, however, something in Veser's usual expression went soft, then died. "Right. Gotcha." He turns, finger wagging like a loose pistol, and Conrad can hear him from the living room - "Sorry, babeness. The bossman is up and my services are no longer required here. Maybe give him a few minutes?" The sound of a duffel bag packing followed Conrad back to his bedroom, where he dressed with all due haste.

Toni Ipres was waiting beside the front door just as Veser was leaving through it, her arms curled under a canvas bag with a shirt sleeve poking out of the top. She glanced up, worried, blinking once in surprise with her blue lipstick forming a near-perfect O in silent regard. Conrad's eyes narrowed and he glanced behind himself, then down at his clothes - nothing out of the ordinary, looking back up with clear puzzlement. "Can I help you, miss Ipres?"

A sharp laugh, Toni's eyes crinkling merrily and her cheeks warming. "Everybody's calling me that lately. What is _with_ you guys? Like we haven't totally solved a murder crime together. Here," she shoves the bag out in Conrad's general direction, taking a few steps into the condo. "I guess I borrowed these. Thanks, umm...?"

Hesitantly, Conrad steps forward to take the bag. "Um, what?"

"Sorry," a whisper, "we had it cool in that alley but I didn't actually catch your name last time - ?"

Conrad's mouth drew back in a grimace. "Achenleck." An expectant silence, a huff as he closes the front door. "Conrad."

"Right! Connie! Sorry, I thought Connie was the green dude or something." Another laugh, full-throated and merry as she offers a hand forward. "You can call me Toni."

"Er... right," Conrad takes the hand and shakes it limply by the fingers, slinking away with attention squared on removing his clothes from the canvas bag. "Thank you for - I mean, you're welcome for the loan. I'm not entertaining visitors tonight, so if that's really all we need to say here - ?" He is folding the canvas bag over his forearm and turning to offer it back to Miss Ipr - to Toni, who had followed him a bit into the livingroom with imploring eyes.

"Actually, I -" a hesitant breath - "I was wondering if I could talk to y-"

"No," Conrad tosses the bag when Toni fails to reach it quick enough. "Not in the mood for company right now." A swallow, throat thick with encroaching panic. Was he going to bite her? Did he want to bite her? Would she transform and kill him on the spot if his body lunged at her without his control or consent? "Sorry." And, at Toni's puzzled expression, "Some other time. Probably." A glare, the last go-to for getting people as far as fucking away from him before he lost all his shit right in front of any hapless bystander.

Toni's expression matches what Veser's had been - part 'crestfallen' and part 'resolute', and she turned with a mumbled apology to leave a cardstock thanks scurrying through the front door as it shut.

Conrad had dropped his crossed arms and ghosted across the room to the foyer to listen at the door, briefly suspicious that Veser would have hung around outside to harass Miss Ipres on her way out, but all he heard was the scrape of a boot on pavement and then - a gasp, a soft sob tapering into frustrated, stuttered hiccoughs of grief and _no_ -

"Nonono, _no_," Conrad flings the door open, startling the young woman on the cement stairs. "No. Why are you crying? You can't be crying. What the hell are you even - _get in here_ before somebody calls the cops on me or something!"

Startled enough to take action, Toni scrunches the canvas bag in hand and darts back inside the apartment, backing up against the couch and scrubbing at her face with a choked-off sniffle. "It's just that - _I'm sorry_, guy, okay? I'm not proud of what happened. I feel really, really shitty and Hana won't answer my e-mails and I'd feel like a total _stalker_ if I just up and went to his _place_ and - I mean - _you've_ killed people before, right?"

Conrad had closed the door after surreptitiously checking for onlookers, and straightened like he'd had a knife thrown at him. "Rgk. _What_?"

"You know," a sniffle, "For survival? It happens. It's the shittiest thing in the world, but it _just happens_."

Conrad took a deep, careful breath. "Yes. Sure. More people killed by cars than sharks. More people killed by lightning than airplanes. That kind of thing." Expression still held tight. Cautious. "You feel badly... for killing someone?"

"I don't know! Nobody will talk to me! I think I might have, but then -"

"But then it isn't really your fault." The gravity of the perpetually responsible entered Conrad's voice, "I'm not saying it's Hanna's fault, either. Lord knows the man _tries_. It's just. A matter of circumstance."

"R-right." A sigh, Toni fishing a tissue out of her pocket to dab at running mascara. "So you don't all just think I'm a terrible monster who can't control her stupid half-blooded gifts?" It was a rhetorical question with the tang of self-abasement-for-laughs, even coupled with a wet chuckle and a shrug, but Conrad bristled.

"Who thinks _that_? Nobody thinks that. It was - what happened - I mean, I wasn't there for the whole thing, but obviously -" A sharp huff, Conrad raking fingers through his hair. "Have you ever thought that maybe Hanna is just embarrassed? On his own account? He was tasked with fixing your, um, _thing_. And -"

"Oh, no, that's what I've been trying to tell him." A wince, Toni's eyebrows going up in ever-present concern. "That wasn't his fault. I also need to get a hold of him, for like, a job? Because this -" Hands squared to the right, "Has everything to do with that," hands chopping to the left, ponytail bobbing as she tilts her chin. "Are you picking up what I'm laying down right now, or do you need specifics?"

Conrad would have _liked_ to pretend ignorance, rolling his eyes and clawing down his face. "I'll call him."

"Thank you. Sorry I spazzed there for a minute. It's always a bit... _eh, _for me, after a big upheaval like that." Following Conrad into the kitchen, taking a stool at the breakfast counter. "Is it like that, for you?" A carefully attenuated curiosity, "I mean, did you - have you just fed? Recently?"

Conrad's mouth pinches over the phone, the tops of his cheeks flushing purple despite the acidity of his voice, "How could you tell?"

A cackle, "You look good, dude!" A facepalm, "Ugh, I look like _crap_. Utter crap-o-la. Feel like it, too," Toni's eyes peeked hopefully up through her fingers.

Conrad felt perhaps something was expected of him in that moment, to which he replied, helpfully; "How did you get my address, anyway?" But then of course Hanna had answered his phone with the usual rambling aplomb and Conrad handed the receiver over to his guest with a fumble because he _really wasn't actually in the mood_ to talk with anyone that night, but especially with the man about whom he was magically obligated to _give a fuck_.


	10. Like Religion

"Hey, Anton..."

"Hanna."

"We NEED a CASE. NNNGK."

"I will keep an eye out."

"Both eyes."

"Both eyes."

"And an ear." Hanna grumpily flops against his patchwork recliner, knees on the seat and chin on the back. "And a left foot and a hokey-pokey all around. When we aren't working on _your_ case, we need to be bringin' in the bacon on _other_ cases. Old houses. Haunted antiques. _Aliens_. That kinda juicy tabloid thing!"

Brian/Ahmed/Tristam pauses in the middle of turning the page of his paperback. "Have you eaten?"

"Time is money, dude. Money is food."

"Should we notify your anonymous grocery benefactor?"

"Mnnnnmmmnnnnoooo..." Hanna taps his fingertips across the top of the recliner, staring down at a loose thread as if it were in the throes of bereavement.

When no elaboration spills from the usually talkative detective, Jacobim/Samuel/Mike clears his throat and levels the placid orange glow of his stare Hanna's way.

Hanna huffs, hiking a shoulder. "I kinda lied to Con-man? To like, I dunno, calm his frothing tit-fits. People fall in love and sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it's not with their preferred gender, or species, or - "

"Or inanimate object."

"Right! Eiffel tower lady." A blink, a shake of the head, "And that contract, on a metaphysical plain, is _binding_. Conrad seems like the type to chew his own arm off before tryin' to take it out from under a sleeping BEAR, y'know? I was just - I had to give him SOMETHING."

"Mmhm."

"He's _totally_ in love with me, guy. Just like Worth is totally in love with _him_, just like I was totally absopositively in love with - argh." Fingers crooked through shorn hair, glasses bumped askew, Hanna huffs a despondent sigh. "It's starting to actually show. _Prolonged glances_. And ohmanohman oh _man_, he gets, like, _worried_. About me. Out loud. Not good. For team morale!"

"I will order a pizza." Grindelwauld/Horatio/Xerxes stands with a dry rustle, paperback in hand as he drifts to the kitchen phone.

"I LIKE Conrad." A warbling, whining lament, "I don't want things to be weeeiiiiirrrrduuuuuhhhh~!" The recliner creaks and groans as Hanna thrashes on it. A measured silence, Hanna flopped moodily over the large sagging arm of the chair, mouth hidden behind crossed arms. "Or maybe I just don't want to be someone else's major fuckup."

"Anchovies?" Rosencrantz/Spock/Brian peers into the livingroom, phone held aloft.

"And pineapple?" Hanna peeks up, eyebrows pinched. "I mean, I was trying to do him a favor. Steer away from Meltdown City, right? Let him make up his own mind about it."

"I cannot understand what you mean by fuckup."

"Uh, no, that doesn't go on a pizza, guy, hahaha - oh man, what even..."

"I understand." The zombie all but glides back into the room, having completed the order. "But there is no fault in affection, by my limited experience."

"Well, dude, no, ofcoursenot, BUT. I mean. RANDOMLY, _randomly_, out of the blue, shot by arrow - BAM. In love. With. ME." Hand flailing from chest to the rest of the room and back to his chest, Hanna's eyes boggle as he sits up straight in the chair. "It's not cool!"

"Hanna." The quiet to the zombie's voice verged on reprimand. "It is no misfortune for Conrad, if he should find himself in love with you."

"Have you been listening?" Hanna grouses.

"Have you ever been in love."

"Nnnnyyyyes?"

A patient tilt of the head. "It... isn't very selfish, love. Jealousy is a byproduct of obsession, heartache only exists beside unfulfilled expectation - " A nod, "In that which goes unrequit, as physical reciprocation of carnal pursuit so often might. Or. Perhaps." Quieter and quieter, voice reaching the corners of the room like distant thunder. "When a loved one dies."

Hanna had grown still by then, tucking his legs up lotus-style, elbows drawn down atop his knees.

Everett/Bojangles/Quincy shrugs, a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his leathery cheek. "The love itself never fades, never breaks contract - so says the book you presented to Conrad, which would have been of greater benefit to him than the lie that preceded it."

"Could you just..." Hanna clears his throat, "Talk forever?"

"I am not sure I follow."

"You're Watson to my Sherlock, right? Just making sure I haven't been surpassed. Heh."

"Sherlock Holmes didn't know the Earth orbited the Sun, because it was never of consequence to solving earthly crimes."

"That's kinda exactly what I mean -" Laughing, Hanna springs from the chair to answer the ring of the phone, chiming in about delivery confirmation calls and the spooky dangerous neighborhood in which he lived that all the pizza guys must _totally_ dread and - "Oh. Uh. H-hey. Yeah." A drop in Hanna's excitement, voice boiling down to something meek. "Yeah. Toni, hey uh I'm s - " A long, heavy silence as the voice on the other end of the line chatters and squawks and laughs. "Oh." The line of Hanna's shoulders relax. "Oh yeah. No, that is bad. I'm just... I'm sorry anyway? That is really kinda shitty." An abrupt laugh shared over the line, Hanna sweeping around on is feet to regard Blaine/Yggdrasil/Masaki with really wide eyes and eyebrows drawn down in incredulity, teeth flashing in more a grimace than a laugh.

Robin/Vergil/Ai hovers at the kitchen entrance, hands in pockets and tie slung over a shoulder.

"No, yeah..." Hanna scrambles for a pad of paper, accepting the pen from a dry, green hand. "Yes. Start from the beginning. Wha - he's - no yeah, he should hear this." A nervous laugh. "You ask him, for me - please, just." Face scrunching up, pained. "Tell him I'll need his help on this one _for realsies_. Well yeah he's gonna say _no_ when you put it that way, hahaha!" A brief pause, breath held as he listens to the conversation taking place on the other side of town. "HAH! Wow yeah no. Aha. Ah. Good times. Hey, so, yeah - okaystartfromthe - yeah. Yes! Dude, you have _no idea_."

As Hanna scrawls great looping notes and jots tiny, hasty notes in _those_ notes, Allen/Gertrude/Dave drifts back to his corner, book open, one ear out for the pizza guy and the other trained on the warble of Hanna's laughter.


	11. For Queen and Country

The neon green streak in Toni's bobbing ponytail winks through the dark spill of hair as she cants into a jog up the narrow, dingy stairs of Hanna's apartment building. This prompts a question concerning the designer working for Toni's band, the inquiry pulled out past Conrad's throat in the abrupt attempt to make up for the awkward silence of the cab ride - when he'd been lost in self-inflicted terror over whether or not it was actually _okay_ to be outside, in public, on the whole _not biting people _front.

"I'm the designer," Tony dimples over her shoulder as they round the first floor platform. "We play mostly night gigs, which _mostly_ happen at clubs, so yeah." A small flourishing bow at the top of the stairs, "Custom club-wear. _Ta-da_. Sometimes we open for another band and need to switch up the look, but, you know how it is. Ars gratia artis!"

"Good balance of color in your, ah, stage costumes, is all." Conrad delivers a tight-lipped nod as they round the stairwell platform to Hanna's hallway, because _ugh_ smalltalk. "Unsolicited advice? Put your tall blonde friend in the middle, and keep her in warm neons - pink and orange if she doesn't like the black for contrast. None of that brown and taupe, no neutrals."

"And you say you do this for a living?" Toni knocks on Hanna's door, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear - preening.

Conrad catches himself doing much the same, brushing at non-existent lint, and curls his hands up in exasperation. "Not exactly fashion, no." Scratching at the bite-scar under the high collar of his button-up, he pauses and tugs his hand back down to his pocket, "I'm an illustrator - sometimes mascot and logo design, mostly just conceptual layouts for magazine photo spreads and helping clients make soup cans look like Andy Warhol soup cans but _not like _Andy Warhol soup cans at all because that would be _too obvious_."

Toni laughs, ushering Conrad into the apartment as Victor/Grigori/Zach answers the door. "So, you're in advertising! I should get Mae to hire you for a poster gig - "

The door closes on the amenable conversation, and the voices beyond commence rising and falling as greetings are made, situations clarified, and answers sought. After a time, the pizza arrives, and Conrad steps out with an excuse about the garlic in the sauce_ bothering_ him, though in truth the garlic in anything never actually bothered him. Not the garlic, no, but too many happy people in a small (_cluttered_) apartment with probing questions and weighted looks, as if they _hadn't_ just been discussing murderous fauna like _normal_ people might discuss the weather. Cloudy with a chance of evisceration.

That, and all the people, ever, recently, seemed to be _looking_ at Conrad. Not the usual glance-and-move-on, which he was used to - dressing as snappily as he did and having the Achenleck family 'presence' (which was really just good posture smacked into Conrad's early learning with a hard-edged ruler). He was used to the glances. Used to ignoring them. What he was not used to, however, were _lingering_ _gazes_. A moue of awe had occupied Hanna's expression the first half of the night and even the zombie had raised his eyebrows just a midge higher than usual. Conrad hadn't spent _so_ much time in Toni's company previously to notice any change in _her_ behavior - perhaps she was just warmer to him for the clothing loan and the shoulder-to-complain-on, who knew - but it was still _rare_ that a woman ever made such open conversation with Conrad. Most just noticed he had better taste in scarves than they did and moved on.

And Conrad had to _escape_ that; the approval-seeking and the friendly banter and the horrifying-but-unrecognized-as-such mission planning. Because perhaps that kind of thing was par for Hanna, who involved himself in danger as the course of his profession, or even Toni - who belonged to a 'species' inherently violent and territorial; but it just _wasn't_ something Conrad could stomach with open acceptance, and he was tired of being the dissenting voice of worry backed only by a calm-eyed dead man.

So, Conrad had excused himself to leave the apartment on an unannounced errand, took a brisk walk to the (seedy, brightly lit) corner store, responding to Hanna's concerned text with the reassurance that he was just 'lorrying around the petrol queue for a pack of fags', smirking fondly down at the garbled reply - as Hanna apparently thought the slang was English for something dastardly. Conrad had smoked half the pack of cigarettes on the lingering walk back to Hanna's; the old habit soothed his nerves even if the smoke didn't _particularly_ affect him in any direct way. No coughing, no nicotine jitters. There was an undeniable spike in worry each time he pulled a wilting cardboard match to life, and he held the brand carefully away from himself whenever he was ashing the cherry, wondering idly where this new apprehension of open flame had come from and laughing bitterly because _of course_ vampirism would come with its own set of neuroses.

But the cigarettes had always helped, when the clomipramine was low or when an all-nighter had to be pulled at the studio, or hell, even as just an _excuse_ to get him out of the house during the family shabbat dinners. The cigarettes had always been something he could focus on; a ritual to soothe his compulsions, a burnt sacrifice to appease the demons of anxiety.

Conrad lingered outside the narrow apartment door in a hallway of narrow apartment doors, legs crossed at the ankles and back flat against the peeling paint of the wall, arm draped loose around his waist while he crammed another cigarette down, pulling a drag with every breath in like some sort of automaton billowing its exhaust. He _did_ feel calmer, even if it was just a psycho-somatic Pavlovian type thing, even if the cigarette smoke (fragrant, expensive, sweet tobacco with an oaky undercurrent) would linger in his clothes and in his hair and stain his condo's walls if he _really_ got back into the habit. Not to mention his teeth, his poor teeth, so painstakingly whitened against every cup of coffee and -

The avalanche of inner-fussiness drew to a grinding halt as a quiet figure loomed up from the top of the stairs, Doc Worth staring down at the hallway linoleum with some grumbling preoccupation, hands shoved in the pockets of his fur-lined doctor's coat as he approached. Conrad could hear the slosh of a blood bag in Worth's possession, putting two and two together - Hanna was the only person they had in common, Doc Worth didn't have Conrad's contact information (thank FUCK) and didn't know where he lived (thank ALL THE FUCKS).

The doctor himself was looking only a _little_ worse for the wear of the night previous - pale, gaunt, the usual. A bit more listless, an ugly burnt gash down the side of his stubbled birdy neck where he'd had to cauterize the bite wound. "Shove over, mac." Worth glared _through_ Conrad, hardly sparing him a second glance as he crowded in at Hanna's door, knocking and grumbling. "No buyers here. Scram."

Conrad made a noise in the back of his throat, eying Worth doubtfully and taking solace in another puff from the cigarette because he _was not going to engage in more weirdness_. He could hear Hanna's bright voice approach through the thin door, felt the warm whoosh as the apartment was opened and the aroma of food and friendship traded places with the hallway's cold halo of cat piss.

"Hey yo, doc! I thought you were Connie."

Conrad shrivels from the door, hastily spitting smoke and waving it away from Hanna's apartment, feeling like a husband caught out by the wife and _what the hell_.

"Oh, is someone - ?" Hanna's head pokes out at the same time Worth glances over the sharp hill of his shoulder. Hanna frowns. "Hey Conman. Thought you ditched us."

Worth, meanwhile, takes a heartbeat to return the bloodpack to his pocket, 'just here to drop somefin' off' buried under Hanna's revelation. Worth single-handedly shoves at Hanna's stomach and leans in to grasp the doorknob, closing Hanna's protest out with the reassurance that the adults were just going to have a talk. The door clicks shut over 'no fighting in the hall!' and Worth steps sideways to plant his shoulder against the wall as if to block Conrad's view of escape.

Conrad is forcibly suspicious, mouth small in its frown and eyes narrow. "Did you just mistake me for a drug dealer."

Worth makes the _contemplative noise_ in the back of his throat that always has Conrad prepared to see the man scratch his own balls or spit on the floor or slap a passing waitress' ass or something equally and obnoxiously 'manly'. If Worth was anything, he was expressive, and right then a message was written on the planes of his eyebrows and the hill of his jutting jaw, bruised eyelids half sunk over a (surprisingly, always) sharp, piercing stare. Worth leans in, shoulder flat against the wall in a loud scuff, one arm draped mid-air as if to point out anything specific but failing to land on any one aspect of Conrad's person. He makes _the noise_ again, softer this time, and Conrad visibly blanches.

"If you do not lean _back out_ of my personal space, I am going to stab you in the eye with this fag-end." The cigarette that Conrad had shielded from Hanna's doorway was wielded vaguely in the direction of Doc Worth's face-area, Conrad inching away from his target because on his list of errands that night 'grievous bodily injury to another' was bottom-tier. Worth did not shrink from the threat, however, and even leaned in _closer_. With a _leer_. "I'm not kidding," Conrad hissed in protest, steadying his hand, lip curling in a silent snarl.

Worth took another head-to-toe inventory of the _vampire_ in front of him, grin at odds with the situation - a light grin, a _friendly _grin. An easy grin. Dry like so much alleyway cardboard. He crosses his arms, does Doc Worth, craning his neck to bring himself eye-to-eye with the cigarette, winking slowly to knock the ash free with his lashes, a sooty tumble down the front of a sharp cheek.

Conrad isn't breathing, isn't moving. He's a bit stupefied by his own motor control, by the steadiness of the brand so close to such a sensitive part of a body; Worth does eventually wince and pull back - proving he was somewhat human, rubbing a bony knuckle under the corner of his watering eye.

" 'Ey," Every noise out of the hollow of the doctor's chest is akin to a waking grunt, intimate and low and it makes Conrad feel as embarrassed as if he'd walked in on something private.

"What."

Doc Worth shakes his head, smile open-mouthed and toothy, then tilts his chin up. "Here I was keepin' an eye out fer a mouse an' f'rgot ta look up fer a bat. _Hah_."

If Conrad's eyes could narrow any further they'd be completely shut, so he blinks hard instead and rubs the bridge of his nose with the back of his thumb, cigarette pinched between fore and middle finger. "I'm the mouse, am I." The smile is small and bitter and wry. Conrad _got it_, sort of. He looked _different_. People were looking at him _differently_. "Go on and fuck off, then. I'm sure Hanna wants to bend your ear about something or another." The dismissal lacks a certain nasal whine, and Conrad holds the cigarette down and out for inspection, wondering if the smoke really did change his voice a bit. Bottom it out. Sand it down.

There is a conspicuous silence from the shoulder against the wall; no rude come-back, no ribald compliment. Conrad doesn't _want_ to look over, doesn't want to give Doc Worth the gratification of his attention, but the silence builds upon a knot in a too-full stomach and Conrad risks a quick glance, eyes flickering dark and red behind the thick black frame of his glasses.

_The noise_ happens again, a small vociferous breath, and Doc Worth looks as if he's struggling to keep the smile from his face - like a stubbly condor attempting to wrangle a snake in its beak. "C'mon peaches, give us a drag first," Worth wheedles, palm open between them, fingers splayed.

Without even really _thinking_ about it, Conrad takes one last pull from the cigarette and smushes it into Worth's hand, twisting the butt thoroughly to extinguish the cherry against Worth's palm. Normally this would be a pretty clear assault, a thorough 'fuck off and go away' if ever there was one. But oh, how Lucian Worth did not even _flinch_, how he had in fact held his hand out in no fit way to actually _receive_ a cigarette, laying the pale and slightly clammy temptation flat out, fingers curling and breath guttering as the cigarette died without so much as a hiss.

Worse than the guilt that would have followed after actually _impairing_ a doctor's grip, Conrad's stomach jumps in sudden and vicious recall - Hanna's voice floating up through his memory like a dead leaf from the bottom of a puddle '_hekindagetsoffonit'_. Worth's hand lays between them like a dead spider, and Conrad snatches his own hand back, elbow thumping against the wall with an absent 'ow' following it, the cigarette left crumpled in the cage of Worth's fingers as he draws to the side. Worth shoves his injured hand in his pocket and turns his grin down a degree as Hanna peers through the opening door.

"Okay. No really. The little old Ukranian woman down the hall likes to call the cops at like, the drop of a pin. No fighting in my hallway, dudes."

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

_Thank you for continued interest in this story. I'm not_  
><em>going to abandon it (I usually update after a SLEW of<em>  
><em>edits, because reasons), so no worries. What you don't<em>  
><em>see are alerts to when a chapter is revised, which I do<em>  
><em>often and which keeps much of my writing in the fore-<em>  
><em>front despite the lack of actual chaptered updates.<em>

_/derps_


	12. Glycerine

****X x XxX xXx X xX****

"You couldn't have just, oh I dunno, _not_ exploded everything? Not exploded _anything_?" When Conrad is startled, or piping with indignation, his voice reaches the nasal upper registers of British incredulity. Conrad's voice isn't doing that now, though. He is hissing, and the words are low and flat as the pebbles rain down around them, bouncing smoke trails off sweaty forearms and heaving shoulders.

Hanna is squashed flat to the pavement, arms wrapped over his head to protect important skull-bits from the debris pelting down. After the booming rush of the first detonation, he'd found himself under three pairs of grasping arms, belly shaking with triumphant laughter. Worth was the squashing-est of all, tugging Conrad down by the ear as the next explosion rocked the horizon, while Zanzibar/Thomas/Veronica sat just to Conrad's left, fist snaking out to catch a baseball-sized bit of wall before it could land on the party huddled against impact.

Conrad felt ribs against the flat of his forearm, smelled sweat and the hard citrus tang of lingering chemicals, hand clawing over the back of Hanna's head to push his face into the cement, hissing, spitting - "_Stay down_. We are so fucked. They're going to call this _terrorism_, Hanna."

"They're not gonna _find_ anything close to incriminating evidence," Hanna's voice is tinged with the laughter of someone who hadn't expected to succeed. His feet wag out from under the pile of legs, kicking in small delighted circles. His protest (explanation) is muffled by another hard press into the parking lot to which the crew had barely had time to scramble. "'S not trrorism, Conmn!" Let up for a breath, even as the longer, more distant explosions were painting the smoky night sky in wide wet streaks of red and orange, "_They_ had the zabt-petra. _They_ were probably going to use all those crates of Boran ash and Kalinga root to _explode something_. Did you see any mining equipment? Fireworks shells? 'Cos I saw a whole lotta anti-werewolf propaganda an' a _map_ to the venerated Elder's Lodge, which happens to be a department in C_ity Hall_ -"

"We got it," Worth grumbles, pulling himself to a kneel to dust the cooling pebbles from his shoulders. He shakes out his coat before shrugging it back on, grumbling, "Yer a goddamn genius. Bravo, detective. Who wants a taco?"

From under the unrelenting press of Conrad's arms, Hanna raises his hand, awkward like a seal trying to roll out from under an angry bit of seaweed. "Me! I do!"

A belated mini-explosion, no more than a rumbling pop of some leftover _whatever_ the flames were only just then reaching, has Conrad wrapping all four limbs around Hanna in a less-than-friendly attempt to keep him _down_ and _out of harm's way_. This time, it's Worth who catches the bit of debris that sails too close, but the smoking piece is squishy and wet between his fingers, and leaves a black splat of liquid where it's dropped, near Hanna's shoulder. Conrad makes a choking noise. Worth stands, wiping his hand on the thigh of his jeans, grumbling, "How 'bout burgers instead? Gotta sudden craving fer somethin' _pulped_."

"Nobody's going out for burgers!" Conrad rolls Hanna away from the sopping bit of mystery flesh, teeth flashing in a snarl. "You don't get _tacos_ for extensive property damage, Hanna!" Conrad disentangles himself from Hanna, Tall Dead 'n Silent bending at the waist to help both vampire and bright-eyed magician to their feet.

"Yer right," Worth counters, "Think thass more of an ice-cream kinda gig."

"Are you _kidding me_?" The upper-registers of offended incredulity ring through Conrad's tone at last.

"Sure ain't," Worth dusts his hands together, pulling a face as this only served to transfer the black gunk between his palms. "Nobody dead 'r eviscerated. Prob'ly." Grumbling nonsense syllables, Worth pats himself down for a cigarette. "Let th' fukken realtors worry 'bout _property damage_."

Hanna was standing, feet shoulder-width apart, fists propped on his hips as his glasses catch the yellow light of the flames, surveying the wreck that had once been a row of storage hangars two miles past the line where 'outskirts of the city' had become 'wooded highway fuck-all'.

Conrad _hovered_, seething, the flat lenses of his glasses also two lit windows obscuring his eyes. Smoke guttered past on the wind. "Hanna,"

"We did good," Hanna reassures, quiet but confident. He crosses his arms. "Don't worry so much, Connie." A flicker behind his flame-lit lenses. A smile. "Sometimes things go _right_."

This had Conrad's frown withering, shoulders slumping, fingertips dulling. He watches Hanna, his eyebrows slowly making a bid to collide in the middle of his forehead. Waiting for Toni to bring her band's van to their rescue (and hadn't _that_ been a drive full of Scooby Doo jokes), Worth watches Conrad watch Hanna watch the destruction that was just settling to its fiery haunches.

Bartholomew/Werner/Raj watches the roadside.

****X x XxX xXx X xX****

"I'm not saying you _didn't_ do a good job." They are all strapped into the bucket seating of the band van, squashed up against a drum set and amplifiers, Conrad having abandoned his seat to kneel at the side of Hanna's so they could talk in relative privacy. "You did, and I'm glad, and you should hear about it when something goes well. But. I just." A roll of the eyes. "I _worry_. I can't _help_ but worry. I'm _Jewish_."

"Oi! Getcher belt on, Confag!" Worth is riding shotgun, folding one spindly leg over the arm rest, eye in the rearview mirror. "Dead man's got more sense than you, _christ_."

Placidly ignoring Worth, Conrad bites the inside of his cheek and scrutinizes Hanna's subdued grin. "Tacos though, really?"

Hanna laughs, "Yyyeah. Sort of an inside joke. I've known the doc for... oof, what, _years_. Nearly forgot that one, the one about the tacos and solving client cases and then getting like this _rat maze_ reward - it - it was a different time, you'd had to be there."

"Swear ta god almighty, Connie, we will pull this van _over_ an' strap you in manual-like if -"

Toni laughs, "Dude!"

Conrad explodes - "What the fuck, Worth, do you _even_ think is going to happen if we crash; I'm going to die _again_? Get a _grip_ you fucking nanny-goat!"

"I wouldn't crash ~" Toni reassures musically, swerving the van playfully from side to side.

Maybe it was the post-adrenaline successful mission high, or the quiet anonymity of a dark van driving down a back-road. Maybe it was the wind whistling cool and fragrant through the front windows, the rattle of the equipment as the van swayed on its shocks, the buzz and burrh of the radio and the way nobody could hear you over all this white noise unless you made the effort to raise your voice or bring your face intimately close. Conrad had moved to Hanna's side so he didn't _have to _ shout, didn't have to let everyone else in on their conversation. Maybe it was the fact that they were all together, unhurt, bantering.

Conrad looks back the moment Hanna is cleaning his glasses on the hem of his shirt. In the dark, without the over-large frame of his glasses dwarfing the rest of his face, Hanna looks like a twenty-four year old detective who had just performed a landslide victory against the forces of hatred and fear. The happiness didn't overtake Hanna's face, didn't shove aside all the wisdom to replace it with enthusiasm, no. Instead, the happiness settled there in the creases of Hanna's eyes, pulled a small valley from the corner of his nose to the corner of his mouth, an _adult_ line, the ghost of a smile. Conrad stares.

Hanna gets his glasses back on, knocks Conrad's shoulder. "Hey, Conman. Go Team, though, amIright?" The ghost of the smile pushes itself up on its elbows, grin overtaking Hanna's face, shoving the tired wisdom aside for dopey enthusiasm.

"Why _do_ you invite me on your cases?"

And here, Hanna's grin falters. "Well. Why not?" A bluster of a laugh, "Believe me dude, if I was like a movie theater usher or something, I'd be inviting all my friends to the movies every weekend. If I was a waiter, I'd want them to stop by the restaurant." He makes a gun out of thumb and forefinger, aiming at the roof of the van, "But I'm a Paranormal Detective, so you all get invited to _this._ Neat, huh?"

"Ah," Conrad's eyebrows collide with the rims of his glasses. "I didn't realize you considered me a friend." As the Arrow was more or less Conrad's burden to bear; still it was... well, maybe _supposed_ to be a relief, to hear that Hanna considered him good enough company. "But why also invite _Worth_? Don't you think a _doctor_ would have more important things to do? I'm not criticizing, mind."

Hanna snorts into his hand, "Worth never _used to_ follow me around like this, you know." Eyebrows raised, "Even though I invited him. 'Cos he needed to get _out_ more. And I'm glad he's finally coming along, getting exercise and fresh air and, I dunno, field experience. Just in case." A chuckle that dissolves into a fake cough. "Good to have a medic in the platoon, right? Darn skippy."

"So," Conrad shifts to keep his preternatural balance as the van takes a turn onto an exit ramp, fingers pale sticks in the dark wrapped around the armrest of Hanna's seat. "You don't really invite somebody because you _actually_ need help? You could probably do this job well enough on your own, right? Without any of us underfoot, I mean, you could have -"

"No," low, emphatic, "I can't - I don't like being alone."

From the back of the van, a set of glowing orange eyes turns their way.

A shiver runs down Conrad's neck, and he scrubs a hand over the sensation. "But you could do it, if you had to. You're really quite capable, Hanna."

A tired grin. "So are you, Conman. But I wouldn't ever ask you to go it alone."

"I'm not -"

"I know, dude. You're just a _tad_ on the misanthropic side. _I get it_ okaygeeze. But no man's an Island, or something."

Conrad's fang pokes out around his frown. "Was trying to compliment you," smaller, quieter, "is all."


	13. Things That We Remembered

Conrad returned to a darkened apartment, ears straining toward the tinny music and bright, small noises of Veser's handheld game, Noises that were floating in from an open livingroom window; the sill on which Veser perched, face illuminated by the tiny screen, large eyes drooped and drowsy, shoulders hunched.

Veser looked up. "Hey dude." He looked back down, thumbs busy at buttons.

Conrad felt an unmistakable pinch of guilt - _this_ was why he never really liked to do the whole big group of 'friends' thing - because eventually somebody was going to be left out, left behind. Usually, that had been Conrad. "Hi," Conrad offered in reply, forcibly casual. "Is there a reason you're sitting here in the dark?"

Instead of answering, Veser slides from the window and pads down the short hall to Conrad's bedroom.

Panic leaping to the forefront, Conrad follows - reluctantly, wincing, as if he might find a murder scene just inside the door - but also because there were _boundaries_ that shouldn't really be crossed and a man's private bedroom was one of those and - Conrad's protest dies in his throat, the scrape of blacked-over plyboard rattling against a wall, against glass.

Veser was reaching up an open window of Conrad's bedroom to pull it shut, fingers deftly hooking over the latch before moving on to the next, shuffling the boards out of the way as he worked. The video game chirped battle music from the flat of Conrad's bed, where cold blue light from the screens bathed the ceiling in a soft glow. "Just airing the place out for ya," Veser grumbles, biting a splinter from his thumb. "I know a room can get kinda rank if you don't let some circulation in. Didn't think you'd be home this early."

"Oh." Conrad stands beside his bed, feeling ...

Feeling.

Conrad blinks, crossing his arms, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Thank you. Do you... do this_ often_?"

"When I know you're going into the city for the night." Veser shrugs. "I usually have the place boarded up again by the time you get back. Least I can do, y'know, I figure." Another shrug, Veser hiking his pants up by the side of his belt, scratching his ribs under the cling of a gray t-shirt. "Got some squares fitted to the other windows, too, in case you ever want to wake up early -"

"Uh," Conrad didn't know what to say, didn't want to parrot his thanks, didn't know if he should even _be_ grateful or just tell Veser to kindly stay out of his room from then on, because - "Maybe next time we _ask_ about this sort of thing."

Veser rolls his eyes over the curve of a shoulder, board sliding under the curtains of the second window with a practiced settle. " 'S why I wait for the nights you're _out_, isn't it?"

"Not the point, really." Conrad cradles his elbows in his palms. "I _appreciate_ the, er, upkeep. But I'd really _rather_ you didn't come into my bedroom."

Veser's eyebrows are up, but not in surprise. It's a cold look, and after he's settled the last of the boards in place he turns with a shrug carried in the corner of his mouth, "You really don't have to worry about that, dude."

Conrad's insides tighten. "Whatever you think, right now, is the reason I don't want you in here? That's not the reason. You are guessing _wrong_."

Veser scoops up his handheld game, grin going sharp and skeptical. "I dunno. I can guess a _lot_ of things."

"Well." Conrad shrinks form the door, then follows Veser out. "Don't." He keeps on Veser's heels, moving impatiently. "I really don't want to have to get a lo -" the word 'lock' fades out to a breathy syllable, side-stepping the sudden halt of the (warm, living) back in his path.

"Can we talk?" Veser closes his game with the creak of a plastic hinge.

Conrad tries a lightswitch, huffing out an irritated breath because this was the _third time that month_ the building's transformer was going all heretical on the tenants. "About _what_. Stay out of my room. You've got the couch, the kitchen, _the TV_ -"

Veser waves a broad palm, fingers splayed, taking a seat on the windowsill again. "I _told_ you, you don't gotta worry about me."

"I _know_ you won't _steal _or anything, I just mean sometimes I -"

"_Steal_?!"

"I _know you won't!_" Conrad rages. "It's not _that_, all right, just -" a growled profanity, Conrad tearing at his hair before slapping down his pockets for the half-finished pack of cigarettes he'd taken to carrying around. "Christ. Just _listen._" Shaking hands try the lighter, and Conrad joins Veser at the open window so as not to smoke up the room. The flint catches and a spark hits the butane, flame illuminating Conrad's cringe as he pulls the cigarette quickly to life and snaps the flame out. Conrad exhales the jet of blued smoke out the open window, over his shoulder so as not to disturb his houseguest.

"I'm not going to _steal_ from you, dude."

"I _know_," Conrad growls.

"It's ok, you know."

"That I like my privacy? I am well aware."

Veser isn't laughing, but his mouth is open like maybe he _should_ be. He shakes his head, scratching under his chin before circling his hand around to scruff at the back of his neck. "I mean, if you had something in there that maybe you wouldn't want me to see?"

Conrad stills, eyes narrowing behind his glasses.

Veser pulls his foot up to the wide sill, chin on knee. "I'm cool with that. With, y'know." A shrug. "Whatever."

"There is nothing in my room that I wouldn't let my own mother see, _trust me_."

"_Okay_," Veser drawls, nod exaggerated. His eyes flick from Conrad to the rest of the darkened apartment.

Conrad sighs hard, dragging on his cigarette, contemplating the ash as it tumbles apart in a night wind. "Are we talking about me right now, or about you and things you may or may not be 'cool' with? Because _I'm_ cool with 'whatever', if it's something you think you might need to tell someone about -" hedging, drawing out the painfully unsaid - "But as far as personal _preference_ goes, I'm nnnot whatever it is you think you need to be cool with right now. So you can rel-" the word dies in Conrad's mouth.

Veser is staring at the far wall, at the black windowless hollow of the kitchen, jaw set. His fingers toy with the laces of his canvas shoes, chest expanding minutely in a silent sigh. "Can I bum one of those off ya?"

Conrad glances around like maybe there was a disapproving audience ready to boo him off stage, and slides a cigarette from the packet - thin white cylinder, fragrant. "Keep it at the window," Conrad warns. "I don't want to lose my deposit."

Veser pulls up his own lighter, nodding, deftly plucking the cigarette from between Conrad's knuckles. "Thanks." He lights up, and doesn't cough.

The two smoke in companionable silence, and Conrad eventually mushes his smoldering filter on the brick of the outside sill. "Well," he stands from the window, cigarette butt held extinguished and squashed in his grip like the remnants of their almost-conversation on an extremely uncomfortable topic. "Good talk." His posture is stiff, holding himself warily away from Veser's scrutiny. "Flush the fag-end, when you've done with it."

Veser chokes on his drag, eyes watering as he coughs out a piecemeal question -

"The cigarette," Conrad's mouth is a pinch. "Because I don't want my rubbish bin to melt. Flush it in the _toilet_ when you're done."

"Oh," Veser's eyes are watering, his grin nervous. "Why did you - _how long_ have you been here, dude, seriously, you _cannot_ go around calling cigarettes that."

"I can," Conrad's smile is bitter but triumphant. "It's in the dictionary."

"Okay but seriously," voice still a bit scratchy, Veser scrubs the back of his neck again. "It's okay to be whatever it is you're cool with other people being, and not _just_ because I'm cool with it, but because you're cool with other people being that thing. Right?"

Conrad has to think for a moment, but then, "Yes? Yes. Sure. That." A breath held hostage, a reluctant wheeze - "Aaare you, that thing? Is what you're saying?"

Veser looks about as lost as Conrad _feels_, and his shrug doesn't make it past a small roll of his shoulders. "Maybe. I might be."

"Because it's okay if you are," Conrad is hasty to assure. "I'm a _graphic designer_, christ, half my friends are g - "

"And I'm _trying_ to _tell_ you," Veser's eyes are shut in consternation, eyebrows scowling "That it's _okay_ with me, whether I'm that thing that is okay or not - 'cos it doesn't matter; that _you need to be okay_ with being the thing that is okay that _you_ are. Otherwise, you're not actually _okay_ with me being that thing that is actually really just okay and fine." The window slides shut with a clack, Veser clamping his cigarette between his front teeth. "Understand, dude?"

"Not..." Conrad's glasses have been pushed to his hairline, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. "Not really." He huffs into the curve of his palm, muttering that he _didn't have time for this_.

"I'm not trying to mack on you here, Conrad, I just -" hands splayed open, arms held suspended, "I just get the feeling that you really _wouldn't_ be okay, with me, hanging around so much, if I were the thing that is -"

"Gay," Conrad growls, rolling his eyes.

"Or _bi_," Veser amends, looking hurt. "I'm not trying to police your personal life, or whatever your damage is, it's just that you kinda give off that vibe, and I just don't want to, uh, _irritate_ that, if that's like a sore subject."

"What _vibe_?"

Veser tilts his head in begrudging patience. "The vibe that registers on any and all working gaydars, dude; are you really gonna make me say this?" He shifts his weight, arms still out, and for a moment Conrad's mouth goes crooked imagining he's trying to make himself look larger to scare off a bear. Veser closes his eyes for a moment, huffs, opens them. His hands wag in the air as he speaks, small chops from shrugging elbows, "Like you don't want me in your _room_? Where you _sleep_? Where you probably mast-"

"WHOA," Conrad protests, throwing up the universal hand-signal for 'shut up immediately'. "I _have OCD_, you lunatic! I'm not a closeted _homophobe_!" The upper registers; Conrad's voice reaches them.

Veser winces, "Okay, no I _knew_ that already, about the OCD." He's shaking his head, lowering his arms, digging his handheld out of his back pocket and flopping onto the couch, long-ways, settling down against the lump of his duffel bag. "Whatever, guy. Sorry I brought it up."

"It's _fine_," Conrad laments, "If you're going through _something_ right now."

"No, yeah, I know." Veser is forcibly nonchalant, eyebrows raised as he gives his attention to the game in his hands. "Stay away from Worth, either way, is all." But Conrad had already disappeared in a huff of exasperation, bedroom door slamming, and doesn't hear the warning, which Veser had mumbled, because it never really _seemed_ like that was ever going to be a problem - Doc Worth, and Conrad Achenleck.


	14. Frenetically Yours

"Running low." Conrad stood from the mini-fridge, bloodbag in palm, looking down at the few packets left beached along the white wires of the chilled shelving.

Worth grunts his acknowledgment, watching Conrad from under an equally chilled smile, legs crossed over the top of his desk.

Fidgeting, Conrad shuts the fridge door and pulls a folded bit of paper - a cheque - from his back pocket. He sets the paper down, presses two fingers atop it and slides it across the desk, in the general direction of Worth's ankles. "This is an investment. Self-preservation. You wouldn't deny me that, would you?" The words feel ugly in his mouth, heavy with their necessity.

Worth sniffs, face twitching. "I know someone as can help ya out. Getcha some fresh." A hard stare out of a squinting eye. "Ya need the fresh stuff, Connie. Y'know it. _I_ know it. As yer doctor -"

"My _doctor_ lives on the South Bend, and has a _degree_ on his wall."

Worth's grin is brief and mean and he gives Conrad an impatient _look_ because, no, they both _knew_ Conrad had not taken his 'condition' to no mainstream medicinal facility in the time as he'd had it. "As _a_ doctor," Worth presses, "I can't letcha compromise yer _health_ gettin' sub-par nutrition. Ain't humane."

Conrad's protest shrivels up, because he _can't_ have this conversation with _Worth_ of all people. Knew he wouldn't understand. Knew he'd be dismissive. Worth leans forward to claw at the bit of paper on his desk and Conrad, mildly relieved, turns to take his exit but then there's a clatter of a rolling chair hitting a cabinet and a fist in the back of Conrad's jacket collar and _something crumpled and small and thin is shoved down the waistband of his trousers_, as if Worth had been aiming for a pocket but got the wrong fabric fold - and Conrad is propelled from the clinic, a hard shove between his shoulder blades, door slammed after, and stands there in the alley fuming, digging his cheque out of his pants, the tiny sharp edges of the paper as needlepricks against his skin.

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

Halloween.

Conrad found himself at Hanna's door, politely refusing the offered bowl of candy, to a red-headed snickering apology. Conrad had just come from a party his studio had thrown, smelling of flavored cigarillos and alcoholic punch, things that had soaked into his clothes, his skin, his hair. He couldn't get drunk, could Conrad, at least he didn't _think_ so, and had only made an appearance because, well, he had to make an appearance. And then, now, here, he was making an appearance to _match_ the other, well, appearance that he'd made.

Or something to that affect.

Hanna was glad to see Conrad, even though maybe perhaps Hanna had preferred the knock on his door to be a group of trick-or-treaters. Or a client. But that was okay! Because Bach/Moriarty/Donatello had rented _awesome_ vintage horror movies, VHS yo, and Toni had a gig she was playing but Veser had been free so -

Conrad was ushered into the warm, festively decorated apartment with Hanna's usual aplomb. He remained at the door, feeling over-dressed, having just come from a gathering of _professionals_ and their _clientele_.

"I feel like we should be _out_ and _about_, tonight." Hanna deliberates beside a punch bowl, sealing a lid over a tupperware of snack mix. Conrad surveys the scene, chest heavy with the ghost of empty parties past.

"Where's Toni's gig?" Veser asks from the stretch of futon, opposite of which had been set up an old rabbit-eared television with a VCR sloppily wired underneath. He had lifted his chin at Conrad in greeting, who had in turn pressed his mouth up in something that could have been a smile if it weren't on Conrad's face.

"Like, _next state_ over," Hanna laments, flopping to his back with a squeak of the futon's frame. "I think it's late enough that all the trick-or-treaters have retired," he muses, "And Conman's looking _boss_ as _hell_ right now." Hanna struggles to his elbows, holding a hand up to catch the piece of candy Caligula/Barbarella/Akinori tosses him. "We need to be public with this."

Conrad had gone _purple_. "It was a mandatory - I was _meeting _with_ publishers_."

"Learn to take a compliment, dude." A piece of candy lands against the slope of Veser's hoodie and he barks sarcastic thanks before shoving it at Hanna, who is laughing.

Conrad looks to Franklin/Frylock/Frederico, who had dressed in a torn flannel shirt, patched jeans tied to his hips with a double-looped twine belt. Conrad takes a breath, scrutinizing, "Scarecrow?"

A congratulations hitches up the corner of the dead man's mouth. "Very good. Stockbroker?"

"_Hah_," Conrad snorts, fang poking through his smirk. "Sure. Commission-slave, either way."

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

And one evening, Conrad sits down to process his mail, spots-opens-reads and ignores an e-mail from Toni, who wanted to know if he thought her tall blonde friend was cute, and if he was single, and if he maybe had a night free to go on a double-date with her and_ whoever it was that she would bring_ - and

Conrad deletes the note without replying, having broken out in a cold sweat. The hazard, he surmised, of friendships - especially friendships born in tragedy and trauma and all things secret and unusual. _Toni Ipres_ was unusual the same way Conrad was. The same way Hanna might have been. Definitely the same way Veser was, and the dead man. They all had this _otherness_ in common, something that kept them from maybe enjoying the 'normal' things in life - some to a more extreme bend than others, but still.

It wasn't unusual that they'd keep in touch. That they'd be _friends_.

Conrad, having had all the punishments of his own _unusual-ness_ foisted on him his whole life, resented the fact that it only took a massive fuck-ton _more_ unusual-ness to maybe get his life, well, not _back_ on track, but, on some sort of track. He didn't know how to handle it, the change in social ease, and frankly had never been prepared to even try. He spent that weekend processing font designs, pointedly _not_ wondering who it was Toni Ipres would have brought to the double-date.

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

And one morning, daylight savings' fuckery found Conrad an hour behind, the sun rising just as he made it through Hana's door with canvas grocery-bag handles clutched in white-knuckled fists. He was spitting fury, even as the dead man helpfully stuffed a scarf into the small inlet of a window that was the apartment's only source of daylight.

"Dude," Hanna had soothed, having been pulled from sleep by the pounding racket at his door. " 'S cool, bro. Me casa es tu casa."

Conrad had been too obstinate - he'd never had a curfew when he'd been alive and liked to stretch the night hours to their very limits, just for some semblance of control. All it had gotten him this morning was a lumpy futon that smelled like Hanna's creepy magic garbage (read: not great), while the esteemed Mr. Cross himself puttered around the coffee maker in the kitchen, threadbare terrycloth robe lopsided on all the bony parts of his frame.

That evening, Conrad wakes to the noise of laptop keys rapidly clicking and skittering across his consciousness. Hanna is perched on the edge of the mattress, the laptop set up on the seat of the rolling chair that belonged to a cluttered desk (which shouldered in against the same wall the bed was crammed). Conrad had, sleeping, wrapped around Hanna's waist like a cat seeking warmth, and woke to all due mortification.

Or, well, Conrad _would have_ woke to all due mortification, except the first thought to _actually_ thread its way past his lips was "What are you working on?"

And Hanna, easily, replies, "Answering some questions in a forum." He doesn't sound tired, nor chipper, neither annoyed nor enthusiastic. Hanna sounds like someone who was _working_, who was in the middle of _work_, not someone who was too polite to point out that - their position? Kinda weird. A thought which pounced on Conrad only after he'd returned home, and only then because his traitorous _anxiety_ kept pulling up the sensation of that threadbare terrycloth, and the way the fabric had left corn-row bumps between the skin of Conrad's forearm and the bony frame from which the robe had been hanging, lop-sided.

**X x XxX xXx X xX**

_Whooo, I can't believe this fic is a little over two_  
><em>years old! The ConWorth picks up after the mild_  
><em>ConHanna stuff has a chance to die down, I  
>promise. <em>_JUST STICK WITH IT. Hanna needs ta be,  
>like, that<em> _bridge between worlds__. Know'm'sayin'?  
><em>


	15. Selling Matchbooks

**X xX x X Xx xXx x**

The corner of Conrad's mouth could put a line on his face whenever one of his pinched frowns went deep with disgusted surprise. This, coming from someone who had yet to don the jaded armor of his post-modernist generation; it made him look older than he was, that line, springing up the strangest juxtaposition of naivete and scorn. _Of course_ he was surprised by general disagreement and calamity, one simply didn't go around _expecting the worst _out of people. Conrad was _anxious,_ not an asshole, and was keeping an open mind so when people got around to disappointing him (as they did) he could be free of responsibility. He'd have _tried_, despite wearing the stank-face. Despite quietly fuming in a corner. Despite his offended surprise, when other people turned out to be less than ideal conversationalists or house-guests or chefs or paranormal detectives or friends.

This night, Conrad's frown isn't pulled tight. The line isn't there. The frown is young without its sharp crease, and sad, and Lucian Worth is surprised to recognize the face without the sneer that usually accompanies it. Worth pauses on the sidewalk, eying the nearest shopfront in doubt - calling over his shoulder, "In Hipsterville already? City gets smaller erry year, christ."

Conrad, who had been standing with his elbows on the flat guardrail that cordoned off the subway entrance, looks up from his contemplation of the dimly lit stairwell below. His shoulders rise and fall with the forced sigh. A custodian shuffles below with a bucket of rocksalt, dusting the stairs against winter ice. The suggestion of snow is hanging in the air, shy gnat-like flakes stirred into hair and scarves by a bitter wind. Conrad taps one of his feet behind himself, readjusting the fit of a heeled boot. His scarf is thin and striped - because of course it is - and there is a designer ceramic travel-mug clutched between his bare hands - because of course there is.

Worth ambles the five or seven steps between the storefront and the side of the square pit of the subway entrance. "Ya posin' fer a photo jus' standin' there like that? Gonna use it on the jacket 'a yer romance novel?"

The line of Conrad's usual, deeper frown flickers, but doesn't hang around on its usual roost. "Fuck off," he mutters into the rim of his coffee mug, not drinking, "We both know you don't _read_."

Worth smiles, the kind of grin one might have when reassured that everything was still right in the world. "So what ails ya, princess? Might have somethin' in my controlled substances cabinet fer holiday blues, yanno." He sidles up next to Conrad, adopting a similar lean on the guard rail, peering down his nose at the gap between their shoulders as he begins the slow leaning inch toward closing the distance. "Good opportunity ta see if yer corpus will cop ta intravenous cures. 'S useful ta know." A dismissive sniff, "Fer science, an' the progression 'a medicine 'n shit."

"You want to know what _ails_ me?" Conrad asks his coffee mug. "It's about six feet high, is losing its hair and insists on verbally unmanning me at every opportunity."

"Lotta testosterone in m'family. Thins the hair. I ain't losin' nothin'." Worth curls his thumbs under the collar of his leather jacket and snaps it forward, fingers extended from the furred ruff. He sniffs, grin a half-cousin to a sneer and eyes narrowed. "Looked as good as Statham since I was in primary, ya better believe."

"You _would_ have a crush on an action hero."

"See, an' here's where I take offense ta you sayin' *_I_* unman ya. Job does itself, fancyboots."

This is such a non-sequitur that Conrad just lets his jaw swing open, lips sealing shut around the 'what the fuck' that devolves into a noiseless expulsion of air. Like a bubble popping.

"Yeah," Worth goes on to explain, "Here I was makin' a manly comparison 'a manliness, and the first idear ya jump on is that I'm some sorta swoonin' poofta."

Quietly, incredulously, leaning his shoulders away to get a suspicious glare in, "Aaaaren't you, though?"

"Statham ain't my type, and thass beside the point. Firs' thing on yer mind happens ta be the _idear_ 'a me wantin' cock." An eyebrow waggle, "Think on that a lot, do we?"

Refusing that question the dignity of an answer, Conrad sputters a late protest, "My _boots_ are perfectly masculine."

An unimpressed grunt, "In Spain, mebbe."

"And I'm to believe _you've_ been to Spain -"

"'Course I have." For half a breath, Worth's frown has taken up the line of disgust that usually graces Conrad's. "While it looks like th' only parta _you_ what's got any worldly experience is yer damn credit card."

"Wow." Conrad looks honestly surprised, eyes wide, _young_, like the late twenty-something he was and not the dour-faced middle-aged knot of worry he liked to pretend at. A bitter chuckle, "Wow. Uh, go away? Yes." He settles back to his perch, taking a step to the side and sliding his elbows along away from Worth. "Go away."

A smoky scoff, deep from the bottom of Worth's stomach. "Tetchy. So I'm only allowed to insult ya 'bout things that ain't true, huh?"

Conrad shakes his head in a furious little shiver, jaw clenching, refusing to answer. The snow begins to fall, small crystalline flakes, then bigger, heavier, wetter; it collects on Conrad's shoulders, in his hair, on the sleeves of his coat. He stares down at the collective, catches a cluster of flakes in his palm. When the snow doesn't melt, he crushes it in a fist.

Worth lights a cigarette, watching Conrad closely. He slides himself over, bumping their shoulders together, offering the cigarette over. When Conrad doesn't take it, Worth plucks the travel mug from Conrad's far hand and puts the cigarette between his fingers, pulling the mug over in front of himself to inspect it, prying its lid off, sniffing - empty. Still smelled like the department store it must have come from. "So now, wh -"

"How about you don't insult me _at all_," Conrad finally blurts, dragging furiously on the cigarette because _yes_ he could stand to _take_ something from Worth, this time, and not feel at all bad about it. "Since you're supposed to be _oh so in love_ with me. Am I ever going to see any kickbacks from that, or is your weird charity as good as it gets?"

"Ey now, who says I'm in love with yer?" Worth scratches at the center of his chest, dull fingernails scraping hollowly across the leather of his lined jacket.

Conrad looks around, wary of any passing listeners, dropping his voice in a furious hiss "That cupid's arrow, maybe? The fact that you _never leave me alone_, and that you won't take my fucking money and -"

"I happen ta run a non-profit organization called a _free clinic_, an' it'd be plain tax fraud if I ever took payment. Don't wanna get myself 'r my business kicked outta this country, ya presumptuous _twat_." Worth lights his own cigarette, eyes cold and reptilian, going in for the kill. "An' who all says I gotta do what some blighted _arrow_ fired by any inta-dimensional beastie tells me?" He taps cigarette ash into the ceramic designer travel-mug, then seals the lid back on. "Ya got a lotta assumptions bouncin' round that egg-shaped head 'a yours, y'know that?" A sharp sniff. "Christ."

"Okay," Conrad drawls, pleading to the night sky, "I'm sorry I think you're some kind of uncultured back-water hick. That's unfair of me." His fingers are tense around the cigarette, flaking the ash in an audible snap of the thumb. "I didn't know that, about your, er, business. Shouldn't have assumed." He pauses, raising an eyebrow, eye trained on Worth sidelong, expectant.

Worth grins out of the side of his face, head twitching in half a shake. "This the part where I say 'no worries, mate'?"

Conrad's mouth thins, but the line of his usual frown remains absent. "Nope. You do whatever you deem best, and I accept the fact that the only thing I can control is myself." Another furious pull on the cigarette, nerves bundled tight just beneath the surface.

Worth's grin grows. "I remember this neighborhood now. Used ta get sleepin' pills on the cheap fer my tweaker patients. Building right across the street here, right? 'S a head-doctor's office, innit?"

Conrad's expression crumples up in confusion. "If it is, it's not an establishment I've ever patroned."

Worth momentarily shares that confusion, but puts his cigarette to his mouth instead of commenting further. Conrad returns to his saddened contemplation of the subway stairs and Worth watches the snow collect in thick black hair, on tense shoulders, in an open palm that rubs the stuff between fingers and never melts it. Worth's face twitches and he realizes his cigarette is down to the filter, column of ash falling to his sleeve. He shakes himself, shakes the snow off himself, drops the cigarette butt and grinds it under heel, breath expelling before him in a cloudy sigh.

"Might wanna keep that a habit, smokin' in cold weather," Worth drawls, dusting himself down.

"Because my breath doesn't show," Conrad nods, biting his lips together. "Yes." He raises his cigarette butt, nodding a thanks that is aimed across the street, impartial and dismissive.

Worth's face twitches again, the corner of his nose and mouth, the outer curve of his eyebrow. He makes the noise he likes to make, not quite a grunt, rubbing at his stubbled chin as he turns to fully regard the creature sulking without its usual vim and venom. "Hanna tol' me, 'bout that night. It was the night ya died, wunnit? The night ya came inta my clinic trynta pull one over like I don't know what a dead man looks like."

Conrad's eye flashes sidelong, dark cherry red behind a thick blue eyeglass frame, black eyelashes pretty against the paper-white of dead skin.

Worth makes his noise again, shorter, like it had been punched out of him. "Well," he tilts his head to the side. "On the topic of things you an' I didn't know 'bout one another. I didn't know that."

Conrad's eyebrows lift, but he otherwise seems unfazed. "Is that an apol-"

The door ten paces further down the sidewalk rattles open, and music and noise and warm food-smells spill out of it. "They have our table," Toni announces, head jerking as Conrad stands to drop his cigarette butt. "Hey, doc! You eatin' out tonight too?"

The recovery is swift. Doc Worth chuckles, hits Conrad's shoulder with his own as he passes him, sweeps a bow in front of Toni and makes a ribald joke on the covert nature of his mission in that part of the city that night. Worth cranes a look past the _haute couture_ double-doors with a wary stank-face before declining Toni's cheerful invite to join them. He parts their company after Conrad disappears wordless and distracted into the restaurant.

Toni calls out her goodbye, a 'maybe next time' hanging unsaid in the cold drift of snow.

* * *

><p>By the time 3 a.m. rolled around and Doc Worth was passing <em>back down<em> that sidewalk, returning from his errand, Conrad was perched in the same spot, holding the same travel-mug, smoking a different cigarette. Doc Worth sidles up to put his elbows on the square pit's guard-rail, eyes hollow and ringed by the dark circles of exhaustion. He looks down the street - a sight emptier than their earlier meet-n-sulk - and then over and down at Conrad, who had not so much as flinched in Worth's direction.

Doc Worth peers across the street, then behind him at the darkened shopfronts. He focuses on the thing that Conrad is so thoroughly focused on - a single snowflake in his uncurled palm. Doc Worth pulls a face, watching the snowflake for some time. Calculating. Closing the distance between their shoulders, Worth reaches over, middle finger hanging down from a hand curled as if to type on a keyboard. Doc Worth's fingertip taps down on the snowflake, pressing it into the stiff plane of Conrad's palm. Melting it into a bare dollop of water.

"There," Worth gruffs, shaking his hand as he withdraws it to clear whatever damp from his fingertip. "Prollem solved." Doc Worth claps Conrad on the shoulder, watching for the flash of red, for the crease at the corner of a mouth, watching. The clap on the shoulder turns into a squeeze, watching.

The cigarette ends collected around Conrad's boot-heels are dark-paper, flavored things.

"Hey, c'mon," Worth drawls, shaking Conrad's shoulder. "You don't move 'r say nothin' then I'll hafta find a lift and wheel yer frozen arse on unnerground here. Let ya be a decorative fer the hobos."

The cigarette in the corner of Conrad's mouth hitches, ash tumbling down into the sourly lit subway entrance.

Doc Worth slides his grip to Conrad's far shoulder, elbow around the back of his neck, a lanky reach around a hunched posture. "Ey, now... Connie, c'mon. I'mma find somethin' in my cabinet fer ya an' cheer ya right up. Yeah?"

"Don't call me that." Conrad's voice was surprisingly normal. He exhaled a plume of clove smoke on the sentence, having held it in his lungs for who knew how long. "My name is Con-rad."

When no further lecture is given, Doc Worth punches Conrad in the shoulder nearest, grabbing his coat sleeve, ruffling him up a bit in a chummy shuffle. " 'S good ta meet ya, Conrad. Name's Luce." Tilting his chin, practically glued to Conrad's side. "Give us one of those, ey?" Instead, a flat pressure meets Worth in the side of the ribs, as he is shoved a good yard down the icy sidewalk, grabbing the guard rail to keep from toppling over.

"You mean _Lucian_ becomes Luce, as in _Lucy_?" Conrad rages, coldly quiet. "You've been calling me _girl names_ this whole fucking time because you _have a dweeby girl name_?"

Doc Worth's laughter is loud and sharp and boisterous and he knocks some snow off the flat of the rail in Conrad's general direction. "Fuck off, princess tiny-feet; I take cock an' I'm _still_ more'v a man than you."

The ceramic travel-mug _shatters_ in Conrad's grip and he holds the pieces up in surprise. "Augh! You absolute _fucktoad_!" What's left of the mug comes crashing down to the sidewalk, a bright shatter in the silence of a sleeping city. "You've been giving me grief this whole bloody _fucking_ time because _youuuu_," fingers grasping an invisible neck to strangle it, "are the one with _masculinity issues_!"

Doc Worth shrugs a shoulder, heart hammering against his ribcage, pulse up. He is valiantly tamping down the grin. "So?"

"SO FUCK YOU!" Conrad shakes the last of the ceramic dust from his hand and stalks down the sidewalk, stomp stomp stomp.

" 'S that a proposal?" Worth calls after, leaning back against the rail, slumping to stick his hips out and kicking a shoe free of snow. A pale hand flashing the bird is the only answer Conrad throws behind himself and Doc Worth chuckles, biting the inside of his cheek as he watches the fashionable set of winter wear diminish into the snowy night.

**xXxX xx X Xx XX x**


	16. The Melancholy pt 1

**x xxXX x Xx**

Ankle crossed over knee, Conrad's leg makes a hollow perch to cradle a great wooden bowl, red-smooth, half-empty of grapes still on their clutch. His ankle is bare under the khaki crease of his trousers, one canvas shoe tipped drunkenly sideways on the stone flooring of Mee-maw's summer house.

The grapes are a glowing red in the high Queensland sun, and once carried indoors Worth sees them go dull and purple like arterial blood. Worth drops the grapes into the bowl.

Conrad glances up with green eyes. "Those aren't washed."

"They ain't dirty." Worth pulls on his cigarette - but it is only a toothpick. Cinnamon-flavored, like his _Papan_ used to chew once Mee-maw had gone on the oxygen tank. Worth looks down in the bowl to double-check the grapes, finding the bowl empty except for the handful he'd just dropped in, and a snake curled 'round the pile - still and dead. Worth flinches back despite the milky film of the snake's eyes - sometimes they molted and kept still and looked dead until you stepped too close and got a bad bite from a scared animal.

Conrad looks down in the bowl, then aims a crooked grin Worth's way. "It doesn't bother me," he reassures, all English poise in a pastel polo with its collar turned up. "You're the one who's bothered." His hands are in the bowl, had been in the bowl the whole time, peeling grapes.

"That's a useless thing ta do -" Worth gripes, because he himself had used the metaphor but he'd never actually _seen_ anyone peel grapes.

"If I bite the skin, it'll be bitter." Conrad narrows his eyes. Green eyes, light, more yellow than blue. The irises ringed in brown.

"Ya got nice eyes," Worth mutters, hand drifting to the back pocket of his jeans - cargo jeans, stained in plaster and paint. Fitting too tight, because that was the kind of thing charlies his age wore around when they were remodeling houses for out-of-school scratchum.

"I know," Conrad casts his eyes back down to the bowl, "You like red."

Worth cocks a hip out, lip lifting in a sneer of a grin, tapping ash from his toothpick.

Conrad holds a grape up, flicks it at Worth. It rolls across the gray stone of that open-walled sitting-room, leaving dark skitter-marks that spread, soak in, disappear in the hot dry of the air. "That one is too small."

"Don't knock it 'till you've tried it," Worth shoots back, defensive.

"It doesn't bother _me_," Conrad reiterates, eyebrows up as if this were a thing that were obvious.

"Hey," the voice is soft and familiar and Worth's heart jumps. "I let the dog back inside. Hope that was okay." Hanna stands there in board shorts and sunburn, wiping the seawater from his face.

"I tol' ya, NO GHOSTS" Worth rages, striding forward, pressing at Hanna's measly upper arms to get him out of the house that had plenty of ghosts to spare. "Yer insultin' my professional fuckin' opinion here, kid, and I don't want you around here when I got comp'ny, 's fuckin' _rude_ -" Because who knew, with Conrad there, with the house empty, maybe something could happen.

Worth gets Hanna into the livingroom with its soft white carpet and overstuffed couches and the woman who turns her head is perched on a reading chair with her long legs tan and willowy crossed one over the other at the ankle. "Lucy." She smirks, and the man who sits up from the couch missing his shirt is the man she had _fucked_, the man Worth had held in such high and worshipful regard, summer-brown eyes under a fall of thick black hair with just that twist of gray in it but no - no she'd never done as much with _Lamont_, because Lamont never taught piano.

And now ah, yes, everything made sense, because Mee-maw didn't like to cook for so many people, so Conrad was helping out with the grapes while the granbabies all sat around like fat ungrateful birdie chickies. "Go help Mee-maw in the kitchen," Worth snaps, steering Hanna around. "I'mma give Connie a hand -"

"Is Connie your girlfriend, lil' Blue? Lil' Blue Babaloo?" The woman sings, curious, earnest, high cheekbones and high forehead and beautiful, kind, twin-sister playfulness. She'd never met Conrad, no, so maybe she wasn't being a smart-ass about his gender.

Worth slumps, feeling about two feet tall. "He doesn't like me." Proper English, because this wasn't back-alley America and he'd be liable to get a smack for any cheek. And he turns a shoulder on that room, craning his head to regard the open-air of the sitting room. "Isn't that right - ?" but the room is empty, bowl of grapes toppled, wet rolling curly-q patterns on drying flagstones.

Worth can't find the snake, kicks the bowl over, curses. It's sunny as _fuck_ outside. He curses more, louder, calling out to the only person he actually _wanted_ to be there, besides _Papan_ and Mee-maw. "Conrad, you fuck -" catching up short, because he _can't_ curse in this house; he can only panic and heave and run around, long legs covering useless distance, heel skidding as he rounds corners, stone and wood and thick lush carpet. He traces the house over and over, feverish, leaping from one room to the next, finding nobody. They'd all gone.

Terrified to inspect the porch off the sitting room, to find the yellow-toothed grin of the dog that had gone dry and dead from a day's worth of neglect. Hanna had let the dog in, though, so it was going to be fine this time. Worth breathed a little easier. Right. Hanna was there. It was going to be just fine. Hanna knew... a lot, so much more. So much _more_ than anyone Worth had ever met, knew so many more useful and interesting and mysterious things. Medical school hadn't been very interesting, but what about hell? All the places mortal men were not made to wander? The difference between science and magic was...?

Conrad wasn't in Worth's room, in the room he'd had in America when he was a teenager - all rebellious metal band posters from overseas and a much-abused office corner - but that didn't stop Worth from getting off, from fucking the mattress, from stuffing a pillow down his front between his stomach and the sheets and rutting into the crease pretending it was an ass, pretending it was a _cold_ ass, flipping the pillow over once it got too warm, grunting quietly into the bedding as he heaves and sweats and gnaws against the inside of his cheek in frustration and

wakes to that old familiar feeling of _not close enough yet_ to come, scrambling in the dark, gut and balls cramping up badly enough he gags on the next breath in. This isn't pain, this is nausea and discomfort. No, pain Worth could handle. Pain he liked. But this build-up, the rank stink of anxious sweat and the sudden clamp of a body sabotaging its own release - all of this he could do without.

Doc Worth finds himself in the bathroom, wondering how Conrad had gotten in last time, if he hadn't been invited. What were the rules on that? If it was a place of business, the residency law didn't cover? That would make some amount of sense, as Doc Worth had heard many a case of hotel/motel stalkings, killings, _mysterious disappearances_. He calms himself under the straight-razor, erection flagging as the metal bites and saws and slips against his arm - the blade is too sharp and it's not painful enough, really, not until the body can register the cuts and send up the inflammation of tissue and Worth can wrap himself up in sterile gauze and stagger back to bed to fall into the woozy embrace of a dopamine rush from a pounding, pulsing, thudding pain - that what envelops the base of his thumb all the way to the hill of his shoulder.

He turns once in his sleep and accidentally crushes his torn-up arm beneath him, the orgasm waking him from another feverish half-dream with the familiar sharp spike of sensation. Because what was pain, even? The same nerves that told his brain if he was touching a hot stove also told his brain if he was touching a cold palm. It was all psychological, in the end, the difference between good sensation and bad.

Doc Worth did not fall asleep the rest of the night, and descended the stairs to answer the ringing bell of his clinic door looking hungover and haggard and haunted and

bled.


	17. The Melancholy pt 2

**x xxXX x Xx**

When he enters the clinic (_enters_, like he can't just walk through a door without it being dramatically slammed open), Conrad's usual preparatory scowl is immediately replaced with a lost moue of surprise. The tiny, dingy office is crowded - there is laughter, beer, cigars. _Don_ Armanini has just donated a dialysis machine, to be used at his convenience and shared with any patients as had need of it. Don Armanini, see, liked his privacy. He also liked his untaxed income, and preferred to see it go to other 'free enterprise', 'charities' and 'non-profit' organizations. Oh, and the place was a dump, Luce, could he get Matilda in there to get things up ta professional fuckin' standard?

Doc Worth is nodding, grinning bashful (predatory) like, ah gawrsh boss I'd be much obliged, yadda yadda. He is leaning back on his desk, palms on the edge, legs thrown out into the milling crowd, crossed at the ankle, as a line nearly dividing one half of smoke-haloed celebrants from the other. Nobody seems to want to cross the line of direction Worth's legs are pointing in, and this is a Very Important Respect of body language that Conrad breezes through, obliviously, narrowing his eyes to duck through the crowd in search of the mini-fridge hidden from view. At this arrival and the handful of scowls turned toward the disrespect, Doc Worth stands.

"Oi, not tonight Sunshine."

There is an incoherent, grievous reply through the slowly dying hubble of conversation.

" 'S upstairs," Doc calls over a few balding heads, chin jutting out in a scowl.

Don Armanini is an tall, rectangle figure who carries his obesity and alcoholism with well-dressed dignity. He looks down his nose at Worth, one eye narrowing under a heavy brow. "This is the kind of tweaker trash I'm talkin' about here, Lucy. You keep it out of sight during my appointments, d'you hear me?" The surrounding conversation is now background noise to the polka music coming from the dusty cd player atop one of the filing cabinets.

An icy retort, Conrad's pale face peeking over a broad-shouldered obstacle, "_Trash_? 'It'?" as Conrad approaches, Doc Worth meets him (hastily) in the closer press of the crowd now trying to impede Conrad's advance. Worth pushes past a pair of stern, pin-striped lady-shoulders glaring Conrad down; he grabs a fistful of shirt and redirects Conrad's approach toward the door of the apartment stairs.

A low mumble brushes hot and furious against Conrad's ear, "Yer cordially invited to get the fuck up there and get what you need. I'll be along in a minute." There is no diminutive nickname applied where it might have been rude and comfortable at the end of such a demand, and maybe this is what turns the little lightbulb on over Conrad's head and gets him through that narrowly opened door without further protest.

Worth slams the door after, a small furious bark of wood against wood, hand tightening on the knob before turning to offer an apologetic leer at lady-suit with her lady-scowl. " 'E's a... _discrete_ sort. No worries." More than one ear is blithely turned toward the exchange, more than one chin is nodding at the chin in front of it as if agreeing with a general conversation. More than one person in that room is covertly closing their jackets back over their gun holsters, twitches and fidgets covered by boisterous laughter, a sea of shoulders tilting as they shift from foot to foot, a crowded clinic office swamped in expensive cologne and beer-sweat.

Meanwhile, Conrad has climbed the stairs in similar cautious suspicion. He can't even _look_ toward the small square of carpet between the bedroom and the bathroom, and fixates instead on the tiny corner-kitchen crowding the livingroom, with its single counter and stand-alone sink. The television, a ludicrously oversized flat-screen, is at Conrad's elbow as he pries the refrigerator open. The mounted squirrel-heads over the couch judge Conrad silently as he lays eyes, then a palm, over the veritable _mound_ of cold blood-bags laying along the center shelf. He plucks a single serving up for himself, savoring the heft, a knot in his stomach loosening as he eases the fridge shut. Then, on second thought, Conrad pries the fridge open with another satisfying _knthnk_ narration, burglarizing a beer from the bottom shelf once it's clear that there's nothing else to be found.

And it's a fresh beer, too, which either said something very good about how often Doc Worth drank beer, or something rather _not_ good (depending on how much Conrad wished to police the choices of alcoholics, which was very little indeed).

On searching the single cabinet below the single narrow countertop, Conrad unearths a single drinking glass - it's clean, impressively lacking waterspots - and sets all he has gathered atop the counter, sorting and switching the items, staring at the display, biting his lip. The baggie goes first, paying its fee of a quick mouthful through a ragged fang-hole before it is upturned above the glass, jet of sluggish blood squeezed out. There's no measure to the process, though Conrad likes to pretend at it as an expert bartender might, eyeballing the amount, a little more in, a little more sucked down with a 'ngk' of satisfaction, as much as is left to the glass, but on second thought no. Bag hanging from between Conrad's teeth, sucking at its remains with all the indulgence of a chef pulling a smear of delicacy from his thumb, Conrad cracks the beer bottle open on the sharp corner of the counter.

Beer joins the glass of blood in a merry gurgle - Conrad pauses to let the blossoming foam diminish - continues pouring at a careful speed, ducking his head to sip at the (pinkish orange-ish) head. The taste is thick and disgusting, bitter and strangely unsubstantial the way cheap alcohol could be, but it's drinkable - it doesn't make Conrad want to gag and he hopes, maybe, that he might actually be able to get something like a buzz if he tried this with good wine, at home.

When Doc Worth arrives (a heavy clump-thod-shuffle of a lanky frame up narrow stairs), it is to find Conrad leaning a hip against the (single, scuffed) kitchen counter, one arm crossed over his waist, contemplating the couch balefully over the rim of a half-empty blood-beer.

"Make yerself at home," the door slams behind Worth, startling Conrad out of his cold reverie.

Conrad is holding the glass up, elbow propped against wrist pinned against ribs, and glances, wide-eyed, from blood-beer to Worth and back. " ... I'll wash it when I'm done, calm down."

"Ain't talkin' about the fuckin' _table piece_."

A snort, lip curling up to reveal a stunted fang. "I'll reimburse you for the beer. What are these, thirty cents each? Seventy-nine?"

"Ain't talkin' about the _fuckin' brewski_!"

Conrad is confused enough to take a look around, searching for just what the hell Worth was (actually, visibly, impossibly) upset over. "You told me there was, er, _supply_ up here, so I came up here and took some. What the fuck is your problem? If I've overstepped your hospitality, then I'm s-"

"You wanna getcher fuckin' kneecaps broken? 'S that it? Or is it ya want _me_ ta get _my_ kneecaps broken? Huh? 'Cos I can still do m'doctorin' from a fuckin' wheelchair, and those sharks down there know that better'n anyone!"

"Well," Conrad's nose is good and properly wrinkled at the corners by now, and he sets the beer down with a decisive gravity. "It's not exactly anyone's fault but your own, if you let people like that through the door."

"Shut th'fuck up," Worth snaps, crossing his arms defensively into the wrap of his lined whitecoat. His chin recedes down into the tobacco-stained fur and he slinks across the room, an uneasy pace from couch to door to television back to door. "Ya ignorant twat. I would hafta shoot ya myself, just ta hide th' fact that it wouldn't actually kill ya!" He's fuming, is Worth, and out of the corner of his eyes can see Conrad deflate with realization.

"Well, _Jesus_, couldn't I just apologize, or -"

Worth shakes his head, running fingers back through the scruff of his hair, "The sign on th' god-damn door said 'closed'. If I had enny 'a yer contact information like I been askin', I coulda left you a phone message 'r sommat, tellin' you ta keep away." A lower mumble, hissing with frustration, "And it ain't like they'da let me lock the door, no, paranoid fuckin' anti-establishment lot, that one. Like _I'd_ try ta off 'em with a bomb. Tsch."

"So you're saying I shouldn't have shown up here at all, tonight." Conrad scrubs his face, pinching his fingers up under his glasses with a forced huff. "That I shouldn't have seen any of them, here, with you, like they can't have a witness to that?"

"Yeh, well, y'didn't see the most important face, and that's what'll prob'ly save yer stupid, arrogant, _cock-sucking life._ That, an' if ya wait 'til they all leave 'fore haulin' ass back to yer bat-cave, ya might not get followed."

Bristling for more than one insult, "I don't _live_ in a _cave_, I live in a -"

"Don't fuckin' tell me that; a legal residence only makes it a good percentage more likely they could find ya, an' try an' kill ya." Worth flaps a hand irritably through the air, and the wafting scent of relatively recent wounds under warm bandages pulls Conrad's eyes shut in a flutter.

Conrad shakes his head, "Yeah, 'try' and kill me. It's not like - I mean, I'll need an excuse for being dead at _some point_." Nodding, forcibly casual, "Getting shot would be way easier than staging some fiery auto-crash, and hey you can write up the death certificate!" A short, dry chuckle. "Sure, why not. I've always wanted to attend my own funeral. Sounds like fun - no time like the present, why put off til tomorrow what a gangster can do to you tonight, all that." His anger simmers just under the hint of sarcasm, as if with-holding his phone number from Doc Worth could have _ever_ had such disastrous results.

"Y'don't wanna go down that road, Connie," Worth's voice cracks on the nickname, and he pauses to carefully consider the peeling, blistered paint of the apartment door. "A head-shot might scramble somethin' y'don't want scrambled. Might end up attendin' yer own funeral as a droolin' mongoloid, 'r sommat."

"Wouldn't matter if I were. I plan to lie very still in the coffin with my eyes shut, and see how long I can hold in my laughter. Maybe a grievous head wound in the expiry report would help - closed coffin, stifling the snickers, rather necessary."

Worth cracks an eye open, grin curling up through the storm of his worry. "Yer a sick puppy."

"Don't say that; you sound like my mother when you say that." Conrad, mildly relieved that they had moved past the topic of his (huge, awful, pointless) mistake against the safety of all in the room, picks up his beer to take another mouthful, hissing air in through his teeth and wincing at the awful tang.

"Yer mum was an Aussie?"

"She's _English_. And she did - she _does_ - think I was - _am_ - a serial-killer. Just waiting to debut my elegantly planned primary-school massacre." A twist of the voice, washed down with a bitter mouthful of coppery hops. "That I was 'sick'. That I _am_." Because why not go ahead and share while imminent bullet-induced trauma loomed just moments nearby.

"Pff, what, you turn fourteen an' she find yer horsie porn?"

Conrad rolls his eyes. "I think that's enough personal chat for one night. When do your friends leave?"

"My _clients_ are already on their way out. I'mma deal with installation an' whatever babysitters they wanna leave behind fer that, dunno how long that's gonna take." Worth gestures at the door as if it's to blame, one hand shoved into his pocket, the bulge of a clenched fist through shapeless denim. "Yer gonna stay the fuck up here an' yer not gonna make a peep, in the hopes they got it in their heads ta forget yer existence."

"Right." Conrad salutes with his glass, "I'm Harry Potter. You're Vernon Dursely. Got it." But after the reference, Conrad purples about the neck and ears, and silently curses Hanna's taste in audio books, because it's very obvious that Worth doesn't get the reference and is trying to decide if it's okay to admit that or not, eyes narrowed suspiciously. Conrad takes a breath, feeling sourcelessly guilty for knowing a literature reference in front of someone who might not - "It's from a -"

"I know what Harry Potter is. JK, _roight_?" The accent is exaggerated, leaned on, hidden under, a thin back-of-the-nose and front-of-the-mouth quip. "You been spendin' time with Red, huh?" The line of questioning is methodical despite its rapid delivery, and careful. It tip-toes where Worth normally steam-rolls. Doc shoves both his hands in his coat pockets, flapping the sides out like a bird steadying itself with its wings. He steps in Conrad's general direction. Pauses. Steps again, looking at him from a different angle. "Wanna ask yer somefin', 'fore I go handle the penny gallery."

Conrad eyeballs Worth side-long. "Okay," he allows carefully. "But you can do that from right where you st -" the beer sloshes in the glass as Conrad jerks back, balking at the loom of someone he maybe hadn't realized was all _that_ tall for how much Worth kicked around in a slouch.

"Hey," Worth gruffs, and his voice is so serious and his face is so stern that Conrad swallows, hard, worried again that they might be talking about dying, again, and how it was that Conrad had kind of fucked up major in letting his anger get the better of him, or something. But Worth only squints, and those eyes are green or maybe blue, sparking with intelligence and life that the rest of his corpus does its best to masque. "You had green eyes, didn'tcha?" Voice rising up a notch at the end of the question, as if he knew the answer but was only making sure.

Conrad takes a breath, confused, then another - angry - "Did you fucking _steal_ my _medical records?_"

"Shut up," Worth commands again, clamping his eyes shut, exhaling through his nose. "Ya had green eyes, yellow-like, an' they was ringed in a sorta brown, right? _Right_?"

"My wallet. No, my _optometry_ records. That's it, that's what you - don't fucking tell me we _knew_ each other, don't you dare _suggest_ I ever met your _stupid face_ and -"

"CONNIE -"

The bellow dries Conrad's words up, forming a knot in his throat and puckering his lips in over his teeth. He is wide-eyed, and inclines his chin forward to silently, furiously prompt an explanation.

"Yes or fuckin' no! You had green fuckin' eyes and you usedter wear -" Worth's hands fly up in between them, a furious scrabble of fingers through the air, "Polo yuppy shit."

Conrad is silent, trying to read over the valley where Worth's shoulder and fur-ruff meet. "I... What the fuck, Worth?" A nervous, half-angry laugh, "There might be a picture like that, somewhere, sure. I worked for a magazine that did a feature on its graphics and layout department, I might have been - you could have Googled that. And so fucking what if I did have green eyes? You found a picture of me; good job, _stalker_."

Worth is working the bellows of his lungs in a shallow wheeze, and fumbling a cigarette as he steps away, lighting up with shaking hands. Over the terse silence, a wavering and hardly audible grunt - "The term 'peelin' grapes' mean ennything to ya?"

Conrad snorts, arms crossed, but his silence tumbles down into stillness and a shocked, heavy, muted immobility. When Worth turns to prompt an answer, Conrad opens his mouth uselessly, starts to shake his head, but it turns into a reluctant nod. "My uh, my Gemma used to have me do that. She um. She had cancer, and I wanted to help, so she said I could peel her grapes for her. I was also kind of a nervous kid, so maybe it was just to keep me from fidgeting too much, I don't know." A hard, forced laugh. "You're talking like you've met her. My grandmother. And she showed you a family album and told you irrelevant stories." Suspicious now, because Conrad didn't think Worth above traveling as far overseas just to fuck with his life.

"So tell me what the fuckin' snake means," Worth mumbles around his cigarette, and at Conrad's confusion - perhaps over the blithe acceptance of the very personal reveals that were happening - Worth rephrases. "You ever get bit? By a snake?"

"I... _had_ a snake. Mum was allergic to just about any other type of animal, so my cousin gave me a corn-snake when we came to - well, he gave me one."

Worth turns his hands through the air, impatient. "So what's the story with the fuckin' snake, c'mon I got people ta answer to downstairs. It died, right?"

Conrad swallows uncomfortably, clutching up the empty beer bottle against the quarter-full glass in a rattling clink. "It got out of the terrarium and swallowed a mouse that had eaten poison pest-bait. Mum found it in the wax-fruit bowl in her tea-room. She thought I had killed it, and put it there." And in this moment Conrad looks young, hurt, and vulnerable the way Englishmen always seemed to be when talking about their mums. "To torture her for not getting me a dog, or some rubbish." Conrad's one good fang flashes in a grimace, as if the memory had come up to bite him before disappearing back to the depths from which it had just swum. A small, bolstering correction, "I mean, garbage."

Worth is shaking, tiny tremors from head to toe, an energy that speaks nothing at all now of nervousness or fear. He pulls sharp at the cigarette, cheeks hitching under his bruised eyes as if facing a bright sunset. He has to look anywhere but Conrad's face, attention snagged by the pattern a pale, manicured fingertip is tracing in the condensation of the glass in Conrad's grip - a curly-q pattern, over and around, under and up, the rehearsed path of wet grapes rolling across summer-hot flagstones.


	18. Deliberation

While three square meals a day seemed impossible on Conrad's diet, he knew, vaguely, in the back of his mind, that he should be eating more. That he often woke weak, grew crankier than usual at small setbacks both professional and personal, and was generally _less_ the longer he went without eating. Or, well, _feeding - _because it was a thing done _at_, rather than _for_. He was feeding something that wasn't himself, rather than eating for, well, himself. He certainly didn't enjoy small plastic pouches of blood as he had once enjoyed food; what little flavor there was in blood, besides the obvious penny-in-salt, was abstract. Like hearing a color or finding sound had its own light, drinking blood was like tasting in fourth dimension.

It unsettled Conrad, and he was embarrassed on Worth's behalf doubly so; the only conclusion being that the guy had _liked_ it, liked being bitten, because then why else would his blood taste like so much _yes_? Even at that first punch, that first taste, already exasperated with the _need_, Conrad had found that 'the fresh stuff' was more than 'not bad'. The fresh stuff, in as little sampling as Conrad had it, was _fucking amazing_. And the only descriptor Conrad could come up with, the first thought that popped naturally to his mind, was that he _could taste Worth's emotion_ - the proof being that he could both hear and see that emotion, and, less pleasantly, _feel_ much the same level of 'agreeable' in a situation Conrad was positive he ordinarily _wouldn't_. Wouldn't feel, that was, agreeable. To biting Worth. To biting _anyone_.

Because that level of 'up close and really fucking personal' had been _enough_ of a mountain to climb just for the sake of _feeding_ himself, now Conrad was doubly hit by the reality that, yes, it was _so much worse_ than just a physical closeness. When he fed, he wasn't just putting his mouth on a body - he was putting something of another person's into _himself_, something _more than_ the blood, something that _affected_ him without his knowledge or approval.

Conrad had spent the majority of his developmental years trying to _get over_ having too many emotions of his own, and now cringed whenever anyone nearby would express... anything, actually. This was why Conrad behaved the way he did, at large - going out of his way to _be_ a rude jerk, just to keep the atmosphere up, to keep the bitter walls between he and... well, _whomever_. Even happiness sort of bugged him. Anger, sarcasm, these were things with which Conrad could live easily - Veser Hatch being such a comfortable addition to his life as to be either of those at least half the time.

So the night came when Conrad decided to consolidate his livingroom into a working office, to free up the guest bedroom and maybe, without anything like actual interaction, imply that Veser could stay in a more permanent-type way. Get him away from the black eyes and bruised arms, the cracked ribs and the split lips. Not _charity_, no, maybe. Well. Conrad wasn't going to ask for rent - maybe, unless that was part of putting he and Veser on some sort of equal footing, as adults, as roomates. Probably. But Conrad _was_ going to (again, vaguely, with implication) ask if (strategically) Veser was looking for any sort of apartment setup for himself (he was practically a squatter, after all), and what kind of price range Veser was going for (because, you know, pairing up with a roomy can cut all of that in half, and -)

They were _not_ talking about it, Veser as nonchalant and proud as his - maybe - friend that was also (sort of) a vampire. They were _not_ talking about it, that is, up until the point they got the last of the furniture out of the guest room - a heavy desk now settled beside the entertainment system. Veser stood, dusting his hands together, and scoffed.

"So you need a Renfield, is what you're saying."

Conrad's mouth puckers.

"It's a reference from -"

Conrad quips, "I read that book when I was _your age_," and, just like that, the non-spoken acceptance, "No eating cats."

"Can I bring girlfriends over?"

Now it is Conrad who scoffs. "This isn't your parent's house. If you're paying rent then I don't care _who_ you bring over."

"Boyfriends?"

Conrad inhales, nods, eyebrows pinched together. "Give me a heads-up so I can _leave_, if you're going to - you know. With _anyone_. Overnight." Waving hands, puckered expression. "The walls aren't that thick, is all. And I could stand to get out of the house a little more."

"Huh," Veser's smile is easy, which of course makes Conrad _uneasy_, because he can read a hug in there somewhere and he never knows what to do with his hands whenever the members of his hands-y new social circle decide to invade his personal bubble. "Here I thought you were gonna lecture me about con-_doms_." The vowels are exaggerated into a sloppy British accent, with a toothy snicker.

"What? That you shouldn't flush them because it's bad for the plumbing?"

Veser clutches his ribs, teeth flashing in a snicker, and has to turn away from Conrad as if it's _too much_ to even look at him in that moment.

Conrad bristles. "On that topic, I don't want anything _suspect _on the couch. You'll have to buy your own bed. _And_ linens."

Veser laughs all the harder, waving at the air as if to plead that Conrad stop.

"... You've never actually _had_ a sexual partner, is what you're proving here - otherwise you wouldn't be _giggling_ over these very practical and necessary items of forethought," Conrad concludes with an arch sniff, wheeling the desk chair into place.

It was that easy for Conrad to move on, to put aside what had happened at Worth's clinic, to focus on more immediate problems. It was that easy, taking the recovery in stride, enjoying the contrast of Veser's peace in the wake of his panic. Easy to focus on furniture and vacuuming, playful elbow-shoves and the inevitable grappling hug from a boisterous tenant who, like, couldn't _wait_ to sign on to that lease, dude. It was easy to forget the dry-throat trauma and the exposure, the suspicion of how Worth could have known to ask such exacting questions, known such intimate details; _fucking stalker_.

Easy for Conrad to enjoy the strength the 'fresh stuff' had given him, without having to explain to anybody else in the room exactly why it was he was in such a charitable mood, or looked particularly hale that night. Easy to put it all aside, to quiet his buzzing panic, to _focus_ on the present friendship and not the bloodied struggle that had occurred the week previous - after which Veser had opened the bathroom door (prolonged knocking and verbal inquiry) only to scream in that half-mad way of his, waking Conrad from the brown-red smear of the bathtub in which he had fallen asleep.

Because yes, Conrad needed a Renfield. He needed someone who could run daytime errands for him and keep the furniture company when he was out at night. He needed someone who could maybe scream and then rant and then be totally okay and fine with the gore, just a face already used to this kind of situation, just an open ear and a closed mouth (however grinning) that rarely pried with any obvious questions. Comfortably uncomfortable with Conrad's (sort of, amateur) vampirism.


	19. The Melancholy pt 3

Doc Worth had a hell of a mess on his hands.

This was not so unusual in and of itself - if there was ever going to be anything qualifying as a mess in Doc Worth's life, it could only _be_ big, because everything else was just the price of living the life Lucian Worth lived.

The thing was, see, that he should have let the gangsters 'kill' the stupid vampire, shoulda let the stupid vampire play dead, shoulda explained it all away - drug addict, rabies case, whatever. Make off like the fuckwit deserved to be shot, and good riddance. Then he coulda helped Conrad die legally, gotten that part of his life squared away, been _useful _to him. Helpful. Significant. All sorts of good things that coulda shoulda woulda happened, if Worth hadn't killed the bodyguard.

And Worth did feel real bad about that - yeah. He was a junkie and a crook and a masochist, not a murderer.

But the man had _shot_ his... _his_. Had shot Connie. A _lot_. Emptied the clip, even, which had been the excessive twinge of sadism that had really yanked on Worth's temper - it hadn't been enough to just floor Conrad, no, the thug had to try and make a _statement_ like a dog pissing on a fire hydrant and then the six nearest trees. And Worth wasn't the type of stray to just let other strays go pissing all over his favorite tree.

Not to mention, the 'kill' had come as a surprise. Worth had been _half_ joking about the Don's lethal grade of secrecy - obviously Conrad hadn't known who the guy was, or else he wouldn't have used such a tone, right? The worst Worth had honestly expected on Conrad's behalf would have been a hefty threat, possibly made good by a bribe - the same extortion as he himself had been given. But then, Conrad wasn't the doctor under hire to provide Don Armanini's dialysis treatments.

It was Worth's good luck that the Don and his people had thought Conrad for a living persons, now deceased at the hand of their guard, or else the Don might not have been so understanding of Worth's removal of said guard from the mortal plane. An eye for an eye, Armanini reasoned, but his people couldn't be seen anywhere near the incident. One of the women of the group dropped a baggie of heroin on the dead guard and ushered everyone out of the tiny, bloodied apartment (and presumably out of the building and to the rest of their lives, leaving Doc Worth with the burden of the corpses).

Doc Worth had briefly considered calling the police and making out as if he'd heroically defended himself against a heroin dealer, but Conrad's teethmarks were still all over him and the whole scene was just too _weird_ and fucked up to be any kind of salvageable. So he took the baggie off of the _very_ dead man, rifled in the kitchen drawer for a spoon and plucked a lighter from the basket on the folding card table.

Conrad, face-down on the soaked carpet stirred, groaning.

Worth made a few calls from the wall phone, setting a tea tray with his sundries. He kicked on over to the half-bloody armchair, pleased to see Connie having latched on to the bleeding corpse like a piglet to its mother's tit, and took a seat - placing the tea tray on the low coffee table. He wasn't bleeding horrendously, was Doc Worth - the bites had been more out of irritation during their fight than hunger, and Connie's wimpy little fang-tooth could only do damage if it snagged and tore - in example, if Doc Worth tried to pull himself away (which he had not, for obvious reasons).

" 'Ey," Worth pressed the pointy tip of his snakeskin boot to Conrad's ribs. "If 'e's still alive, you go on ahead and finish it up," he offers generously, slipping a neck tie out of the coffee table's drawer and shrugging out of his longcoat.

Conrad does not respond, a hollow-eyed ghoul crouched slurping ravenous over the body whose throat had been surgically altered to more resemble a second mouth. Doc Worth watched this with detached arousal, one mouth closing over 'another', the thick black lashes of Conrad's eye closed against the pale crest of his cheek, blood painted thick and dark down one half of his face.

Worth ties the necktie around his collar properly, then loops it off his neck and sticks his arm through instead, rolling up the sleeve of his t-shirt to draw the fabric in a tight noose just above his bicep. He takes the syringe and fills it with water from the glass, holding the spoon delicately between shaking fingers as the water is squeezed out into the spoon basin. The syringe is traded for the lighter, the spoon heated over an anemic butane flame until there are bubbles. The heroin is sprinkled in. Liberally. The tincture is brought to a caramelized brown, and the lighter is traded for syringe.

Doc Worth is sniffling the whole while, muttering curses under his breath, watching Conrad with all the weariness he might watch a goldfish known to leap from its bowl to its doom. The needle, now beget with heroin, hovers over the inside of Worth's exposed arm. Doc Worth works his fist until a vein pops into view, and with it a trickle of blood from one of the wounds Connie had left biting through the fabric of Worth's coat. The sight of the blood stills the needle's descent.

"Fuck," Worth flips the syringe to the tea tray like an artist flinging a dry brush, slumping back into his armchair with a morose sigh. He toes at Conrad's ribs again. " 'Ey, sugarbits. Go ahead and leave off th' bastard, will ya?" Worth claps hands on knees, pushing himself to a stand with a groan. He takes two steps and reaches down, fingers threading into a fistful of Connie's (slicked, gelled-up) black hair to tug his stupid mouth from its stupid-erotic latch on the stupid fucking bodyguard. The man was dead - had been, would have been - Worth wasn't going to fret about _that_ until such a time as the adrenaline wore off, but Worth couldn't just let his - couldn't let _Conrad_ - go on disgracing himself. It weren't fuckin' meet.

And Worth was, at the forefront, jealous of the skin that had been met by such a hungry mouth, when not moments prior it had been him under Conrad's furious attention (after little enough provocation - indeed Worth could find and push Conrad's buttons more easily the longer he knew him, as that kind of thing often went).

Conrad was in a bad way. Bullets passed through dead flesh like they passed through wet cardboard - unspectacularly - but there had been a lot of bullets in that clip and a few had more probably met bone (which acted as bone might dead or alive). Worth curled his arms under Conrad's shoulders and hauled him to his feet, suffering the sharp scrape of panicked fingertips against the back of his forearm. He could hear the pain in Conrad's mumbled curses, and grew anxious that Conrad's usual venomous energy had not yet resurfaced.

" 'Ey," Worth prompted, again, smoothing a hand through Conrad's hair to right it, bracing him against his chest, patting Conrad's shoulder before relenting to his wobbling ability to stand on his own. "Nothing hit ya nowhere important? You wanna use the shower, get a change of shirt afore you go stalking down the main road back to yer not-cave?"

Conrad leaned away - that was, forward - stifling a belch. When he vomited, the rattle of bullets could be heard through the splatter of blood, a cascade on the coffee table to which the heels of his palms had fallen.

"Hawt," Worth observed around the lighting of his cigarette. "Toothbrush in there, too, if you don't mind sharing."

But Conrad had pushed past and stumbled to the stairway door, a flail of limbs and breathy exhalation distancing itself down wooden clatters - and so exited the evening of Doc Worth's (now extreme) financial uncertainty.

Lucian Worth ambled to his bedroom, ears straining after the silence the Don's crowd had left behind, breathless over the thought of Conrad running into any lingering goons, exhaling only once he'd packed the small leather briefcase and snapped its lid shut over the change of clothes and clutter of bare necessities. He eyeballed the heroin for a heart-sick moment, attention sliding to the short stack of blank papers that had once held Hannah's runes on them, shoved under a leg of the coffee table to right its crooked wobble.

Worth stood in place for a good twenty minutes, until the support crew thundered through the door Connie had left ajar.

The last thing Lamont Toucey heard out of Doc Worth was "Thanks fer the cleanup, fatass. Goin' on a walkabout, yer money's been wired." And, bizarrely, Worth had clapped an arm around Lamont's shoulder in the usual chummy way, but also swung his sharp birdie head around to kiss Lamont full on the mouth, gripping his jaw firmly, inarguably. It wasn't a goodbye kiss - it was brief, and brimming, a happy act. Congratulatory, almost. Lamont had pushed Worth away, and spat to the bloody carpet, frazzled and alarmed and in no mood to ask any questions that didn't already have obvious, horrifying answers.


	20. Hartford, USA

**xXXxxXxXxxx**

Conrad straightened his cravat for the third time that night, sighing as he sat down at an empty wooden table in the taverna proper, awarding a baleful suspicion toward the oil lamps that lined the walls - fire hazard, weren't they? Genuine, sure, but smoky and dim and dangerous.

Hanna loved the oil lamps. He loved the swinging barroom doors and the fat barkeep spit-shining (ugh) the glass mugs behind the green wooden counterface; he loved, _loved_ the fact that there was sawdust on the floors and that the dishes were tin and the utensils were wood and that they could only wear cotton or linen or leather cut in the frontier fashion in this _dopey_ re-enactment town. Hanna didn't say he loved these things, out loud, in any obvious fashion - no. But Conrad could tell the man was eating this all up, eyes wide as he drank in their surroundings, voice dipping low in an impressed 'woah, _dude_'.

Ashton/Winona/Greenfield had been trussed up like Davey Crockett, leather tassle jacket and all, and set into a wooden coffin to pose as a shootout's latest casualty - which meant he was propped up at the head of the taverna, eyes closed over their eerie orange glow, arms crossed over his chest, there to be left after-hours to listen in on any scheming the prop crew might be getting up to. Because, of course, the Inn above the bar was haunted, and Hanna had to scooby-doo eliminate possible plots and/or suspects.

Conrad hadn't been able to join the case until after sunset, and most of the tourists had not yet gone home or retired to their (frankly, overpriced) rooms for the night - which meant he actually had to play along 'for authenticity, bro, like, don't blow our cover'. He had to admit, though, that the fashion of the times suited Hanna - whose build was that of the generation, low and rawboned and most flattered by striped shirts and snug vests and thick-wooled trousers. Conrad himself, as the undertaker, had been put in something high-collared and satin-lined, red and black, with green spectacles in thin wire frames.

Veser, in the pinned sleeves and suspenders of a piano joe, thought Conrad looked 'pimp', even without the silk tophat. Toni had refused the bawdy 'dancer' costume and opted for more of a Calamity Jane look, belted into a plain white longsleeve left untucked over leather chaps. She had dyed her green and blue streaks of hair black, just to be able to volunteer in the small tourist trap, gracefully opposing the stage manager's suggestion that she wear a feathered headdress with all the patience Conrad would have never suffered - being vaguely not-white himself, but did they even _have_ Jews in America back then?

"Dude, yeah," Hanna insisted, eyes wide this time in disbelief. "Haven't you seen _Deadwood_? The main dude's best friend, like, he became a banker!"

Conrad's nose wrinkled. "Oh good. A stereotype for everyone."

Hanna looked as if he'd been slapped, but the shock slowly turned to suspicion, eyes rolling towards the ceiling in thought. "Yyyyeah..." he drawled, nodding. "Yeah, that show did a pretty good job stepping on all the toes that were being stepped on back then, I guess. You think this is the ghost of a Chinese rail worker, or a mining camp prostitute?"

Conrad dislodges his tinted specs to rub at his face, stomach clenching with another hunger pang - his 'mortuary' was right next to the deli, which also happened to be the town slaughterhouse (slaughter _pit_ more like, ugh) and Conrad had woken up from his roost in the basement with the air full of all that blood smell and only the one cold bag to answer his appetite for the entire night. "I don't know, _Mr. Cross_. Could just be a publicity stunt to attract more visitors." A stunt that had gone too far, by the emergency room reports.

"But why a paralytic?" Veser grumbled low over his flat plate of stew.

"Since this isn't some, totally like, upset labor union come back to demand better housing, I'd guess whatever poison was used might have been measured to mimic a feeling of possession," Hanna explained, dipping a spoon carefully into Veser's plate to dribble the contents carefully over a rune he'd just drawn on the tabletop. The marker lines glowed a faint blue, then disappeared entirely, and Hanna slumped back, relieved but still perplexed.

Veser paused over his next spoonful of dinner, and gingerly set it back down to the plate.

Conrad tugged a handkerchief out of his sleeve and mopped absently at the bit of stew left on the table. "Are we ready to rule out actual possession, then?" He eyed Hanna carefully, recalling the circumstances under which they'd met Veser Hatch, and Doctor Worth's adamant lecture about ghosts and possessions and the mysterious danger to Hannah's health.

"I guess we'd have to." Hanna waved dismissively. "I mean, five people at once? Even if there was more than one ghost, you hardly ever see cooperation on that scale. Something about how the non-space time flows differently for every lost soul, depending on what level of Limbo in which they happen to get stuck. And besides that, ghosts don't have the emotional maturity required to work together."

Conrad's mouth slanted crooked in a suppressed grin. "Nor the living, usually."

"Hey, good observation. Yeah we're probably looking for a single suspect, here, like I definitely don't get any 'cult' vibes from this case."

Conrad shrugged his shoulders in a tight arc and tossed the soiled handkerchief to the tabletop. "So the asshole manager is the most likely candidate. Motive, opportunity, all that."

"The asshole manager is the one who hired us," Toni countered, not without some regret. "Poisoning is generally bad for business."

Conrad scoffs. "Generally, unless they blame a bad tin of peaches on a dead person instead. Then it's entertainment, and there's no saying we aren't being brought 'round as part of the circus."

Toni leans her chin on her hand, fingers curled around a clay mug of cider. "Are you always this suspicious?"

"Of asshole business owners?"

Toni rolls her eyes. "Of _people_. It might _actually_ just have been a bad can of peaches, _accidentally_ served. If the show is making money off an accident, could just be coincidence. We were brought 'round to make sure this _isn't_ a ghost, not to bust the production on health code violations."

Conrad sneers, "What a loyal thespian we have."

"_Dude_," Veser protests. "Don't you think that's a little personal?"

Conrad and Toni share an exasperation that quells their bickering.

Hanna taps his fingertips across the tabletop impatiently. "Okay gang. Who wants to come help me draw tests for poison on peach tins, and who is going to canvas the neighborhood for shenanigans tonight? Conman, you think your nightvision can do us some good? Don't forget we're on the buddy system, here."

Conrad draws back, "I have nightvision?"

"Sure," Hanna insists, but then squints. "Don't you?"

Conrad shrugs.

"I can help him out," Toni volunteers, then, to Conrad - "We can canvas. Maybe get you something to eat so you aren't so bitchy."

Conrad scowls, arms crossed, but doesn't argue.

Hanna and Veser's eyebrows had risen in synch, and they shared a _look_ followed by rising grins quickly hidden behind a cough and a jab, respectively. "Okaaay," Hanna drawls, shoving Veser over so they can exit the table's booth. "I'm gonna see who we can't question while we wait for the kitchen to empty. You two can get canvasing, and meet us back here midnight-ish, maybe? The trouble usually starts around then. Witching hour, yanno."

"Er," Conrad, nervous now, fidgets with a dented fork. "I doubt a perimeter check is going to take us until midnight."

"Dude, no, you're _canvassing_, not just taking a quick jog through the streets. Be _thorough_." Hanna steps past Veser, who is then tugged along by the collar mid-suggestive-wink.

Conrad looks as if he's just been thrown into a tank of sharks, sliding his glasses further up his nose and gritting his jaw before gesturing vaguely for Toni to stand so they can, at his grumble, 'get this over with'.


End file.
